The notorious marbled page in the middle of tristram shandy one of the oddest novels ever published is laurence sterne s the life and opinions of tristram shandy gentleman 1759 1761.
Tristram shandy contains a marbled page.
Words are essential to an author but can also be a bane.
Tristram addressing the reader directly says you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page motley emblem of my work than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.
Is there a general.
Tristram shandy study questions.
Tristram shandy one of the greatest works of imagination in english literature this hilarious fictional autobiography of a hapless anti hero tore up the rules of novel writing when the novel had scarcely been invented.
What are the specific explanations of typographical unconventionalities.
You can watch online as the new marbled pages are posted one by one over the coming months.
But these are of course only part of the appeal of laurence sterne s the life and opinions of tristram shandy gentleman a book known not only for its bawdy usually the word of choice humor but.
Abstract suggests a possibility of loss of the mystical meaning of the marbled page in laurence sterne s tristram shandy to succeeding generations along with the description of the process by which the marbled paper is produced.
I first encountered it in college in a class on the 18th century english novel.
The book written at a time when novels were.
Perhaps the most obvious first question has to do with the peculiar typographical and physical characteristics of sterne s novel with its dashes and exclamation marks its changes in type its black page and marbled page and blank page where we are to fill in a description of our mistress.
In the meantime it s worth looking back at tristram shandy.
Dashes asterisks illustrations by hogarth a black page a marbled page diagrammatic lines of plot and a woodcut illustrating the path of the tip of trim s stick when the corporal is at a loss for the right word.
In my book it is in black and white and does not match the pattern above so what matters is that a marbled page is part of the text but not a particular marbled page.
Tristram shandy study questions.
Tristram shandy gives a ludicrous turn to solemn passages from respected authors that it incorporates as well as to the consolatio literary genre.
What do you make of all this.