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Overview
Yorick, Sterne's Englishman abroad, is blithely unconcerned by famous views or monuments. Bumping along in his coach, the amiable parson buttonholes us with tales of his encounters with all manner of men and women -- particularly the attractive ones. And, as drama piles upon drama, anecdote, flirtation and digression, his destination takes second place to an exhilarating voyage of emotional discovery. Interweaving sharp wit with gaiety, irony with sentiment, Sterne creates a deliberately artless novel which calls to mind the modernism of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. In A Sentimental Journey, Woolf declared, 'we are as close to life as we can be'.Synopsis
A Sentimental Journey is a novel without a plot, a journey without a destination. It records the adventures of the amiable Parson Yorick, as he sets off on his travels through France and Italy, relishing his encounters with all manner of men and women-particularly the pretty ones. Sterne's tale rapidly moves away from the narrative of travel to become a series of dramatic sketches, ironic incidents, philosophical musings, reminiscences, and anecdotes; sharp wit is mixed with gaiety, irony with tender feeling. With A Sentimental Journey, as well as his masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, Sterne forged a truly original style and established himself as the first of the stream-of-consciousness writers.
This new Penguin Classics edition features an introduction that discusses the novel in relation to Sterne's other writing and places it within the context of "sentimental" literature. Also included are a chronology, suggestions for further reading, and full explanatory notes.