LAURENCE STERNE: THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY GENTLEMAN

Details: Called "The most typical novel of world literature," Tristram Shandy has been criticised variously for its structure and design as well as bawdiness and sexual insinuations. It fully evokes the eighteenth-century ethos and places Sterne in the tradition of Richardson and Fielding. At the same time, in its "interior monologue," it heralds the twentieth-century stream-of-consciousness technique in the novel pioneered by James Joyce and Virginia woolf. All this forms the background to the novel which has been examined at several levels for the benefit of our university students. Shakti Batra has been Vice-principal, Dyal Singh College (University of Delhi), has also taught at the Kabul University and the University of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek.