Volume VI, chapter 39; Vol X, Dedication; Vol I, Chapter 8; Vol III, Chapters 25 and 26;Volume IV, chapter 28; Vol I, Chapters 5 and 6; the blank page left to the reader for drawing;

the quasi-geometrical diagrams or figures of interrupted lines and the ideal chapter as a straight line volumes I-V in Chapters XL of Volume VI; the Author's Preface," Volume III, between Chapters XX and XXI; the asterisks in Chapter XXXIX of Volume VI; the missing chapter (XXIV) and Chapter XXV in Volume IV; the arabesque (squiggle, or "serpentine" line) in Chapter 4 of Volume IX; two blank chapters (18 and 19) in Vol IX that later reappear after chapter 25 as "The Eighteenth Chapter " and "The Nineteenth Chapter" in Volume IX; the digression in Chapters 12, 14, and 15; blank spaces within Chapter II of Volume 3 and chapter 38 of volume VI; the fragment in Chapter 1, Volume 5; the musical score of Lilli Bullero sometimes printed in some later editions at the end of the blank version of Chapter 19 in Volume IX.

; the translation of Slawernbergius’s Tale of the Promontory of Noses (originally in Latin) in place of the first chapter of Volume IV with facing bi-lingual pages and a footnote about the original and the copy (pp. 196-217 of the Oxford World's Classics); the blank page, Chapter 38, Vol 6; inserted stories within the story in Chapter 19 of Volume VIII.

Closely Reading and Close Looking

(and Close Listening, Close Smelling, Close Touching, and Close Licking. And Close Dusting!).

read / look at the marbled page/s and the pages they face. Then look at the black page/s.

Looking Closely at a Text

Looking Closely and Reading Closely Simultaneously: A Practice for Everyday Life on Tristram Shandy

Digital reproductions of the first edition of Tristram Shandy

Diplomatic Transcription, volume by volume and chapter by chapter, of Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Another volume by volume facsimile edition

Craig Dworkin, Reading the Illegible (2003) PN1031 .D97 2003 

The "original" nine volumes of Tristram Shandy were each around 121-123 mm high.

Reading a Giant Book in GULLIVER’S TRAVELS They have had the art of printing, as well as the Chinese, time out of mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the king, which is reckoned the largest, does not amount to above a thousand volumes, placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, whence I had liberty to borrow what books I pleased.  The queen’s joiner had contrived in one of Glumdalclitch’s rooms, a kind of wooden machine five-and-twenty feet high, formed like a standing ladder; the steps were each fifty feet long.  It was indeed a moveable pair of stairs, the lowest end placed at ten feet distance from the wall of the chamber.  The book I had a mind to read, was put up leaning against the wall: I first mounted to the upper step of the ladder, and turning my face towards the book, began at the top of the page, and so walking to the right and left about eight or ten paces, according to the length of the lines, till I had gotten a little below the level of mine eyes, and then descending gradually till I came to the bottom: after which I mounted again, and began the other page in the same manner, and so turned over the leaf, which I could easily do with both my hands, for it was as thick and stiff as a pasteboard, and in the largest folios not above eighteen or twenty feet long.

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS DEPARTMENT Book of the Month

Tristram Shandy:

1. Volume VI, chapter XXXIX; Volume IX, Dedication; Volume I, chapter VIII; Volume III, chapters XXV and XXVI; Volume I, chapters XII and XIII; Volume III, the Author's Preface," between chapters XXXVI and XXXVI; Volume IV, chapter XXVIII; Volume I, chapters V and VI; Volume VI, chapters XL and XXXIX; Volume IV, chapter XXIV; Volume IX, chapter XXV and chapter IV; Volume IX, chapters XVIII and XIX  and "The Eighteenth Chapter " and "The Nineteenth Chapter"; Volume III, chapter II; Volume VI, chapter XXXVIII; Volume V, chapter I; Volume VIII, chapter XIX

Viktor Shkolvsky “The Novel as Parody:  Sterne’s Tristram Shandy” in Theory of Prose, 1991 Dalkey Archive Press, pp. 147-70. (I suggest you look at this essay first before you read the chapters above. Up to you.)

Only a bibliomaniac would pay $500 for a recently published paperback book, lol. (You can get a copy for $20 dollars here.)

Only a true bibliomaniac would pay $35,000 for a signed first edition of Tristram Shandy

Laurence Sterne

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Jonathan Swift

A Tale of a Tub

Alexander Pope

Dunciad

Viktor Shklovsky, "The Art of Technique" aka "Art as Device" (Scroll down to chapter one of the pdf linked to the left)

Montero caps

Diplomatic Transcription, volume by volume and chapter by chapter, of Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

New Yorker DECEMBER 18, 2014: We are all bibliomaniacs

Out of A-lign-ment: Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman as Auto-bio-Biblio-graphical Impression, or, the Impossibility / Aporias / Deconstruction of Genetic Criticism: I am (not yet) born / I am (not yet ) written / I am not yet published, or, Sterne's No Penalty for Early Withdrawal Writing Machine

Please read the Class Policies page now.

Some Resources for the Course

Tristam Shandy pdf

A Playful Reader's Guide:

Reading Tristram Shandy The Tristrapedia Project.pdf

Tristrapedia Project Website

Melvyn New, STERNE’S BAWDRY: A CAUTIONARY TALE 

"No------I think, I said, I would write two volumes every year, provided the vile cough which then tormented me, and to this hour I dread worse than the devil, would give me leave-----and in another place----(but where, I can't recollect now) speaking of my book as a machine, and laying my pen and ruler down cross-wise upon the table, in order to gain the greater credit for it-----I swore it should be kept a going at that rate for these forty years if it pleased but the fountain of life to bless me so long with health and good spirits."

--Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Chapter One, Volume VIII

—This is vile work.—For which reason, from the beginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what's more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits.

--Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, . . . ---------

Eighteenth-century Epicurianism, materialism, and atheism: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, La Mettrie: Machine Man and Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) 

Paul de Man's writing machine

Jacques Derrida's typewriter ribbon

Gustave Flaubert, Bibliomania: A Tale (see page below)

Définition du terme: Bibliomanie

Neil Kenny, "Books in Space and Time: Bibliomania and Early Modern Histories of Learning and 'Literature' in France," Modern Language Quarterly. Vol. 61 Issue 2 June 2000, 

Another notable eighteenth-century book besides Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub with blanks and asterisks: Alexander Pope,The Dunciad in Four Books Ed. Valerie Rumbold (2009) 

The Dunciad pdf (wit as warfare)

"The reader who demands to know what Sterne really thinks of a thing, whether he is making a serious or a laughing face, must be given up for lost."

--Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, I and II

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, ed. Ian Campbell Ross (Oxford World's Classics)

Visual Editions’ Tristram Shandy

Digital "Print" Literature, Digital Literary Theory, and Tristram Shandy

Visual Editions' Tree of Codes

Paul Ardoin, "Jonathan Safran Foer and the Impossible Book," PMLA Vol. 128, No. 4 (October 2013), 1006-1008

Hayles

Nationalism, Literary History, and the Receptive Sterility / Impotence of Tristram Shandy: Is Tristram Shandy an English novel or is it a European novel? Is it World Literature? 

Periodization: Tristram Shandy's deconstruction of eighteenth-century satire and madness versus (German) Romanticism (irony and madness)

James Joyce, Swiftiana and Sterne

Some Articles and Book Chapters addressing questions that will concern us as we "read" Tristram Shandy: how to look at the novel, sometimes regarded as an aesthetic object; how to read it; and whether to regard it as a modern novel or an eigtheenth-century novel: 

Zoe Eckman, "Visual Textuality in Tristram Shandy, Print Technologies, and the Future of the Novel," The Shandean 24 (2013)

Christopher Fanning, "Sterne and Print Culture," The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne edited by Tom Keymer

Peter de Voogd, "Sterne and Visual Culture," The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne edited by Tom Keymer

Melvyn New, "Sterne and the Modernist Moment," The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne edited by Tom Keymer

Wolfgang Iser, Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy, trans. David. Henry Wilson. Landmarks of World Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Tristram Shandy as Eighteenth-Century Novel?

Thomas Keymer, Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. PR3714.T73 K49 2002 

Tristram Shandy as Modernist Novel?

Viktor Shkolvsky, "The Art of Technique" aka "Art as Device" (Scroll down to chapter one of pdf)

Italo Svevo, Zeno's Conscience as modernist heir to Tristram Shandy (Sterne mentions Zeno.)

Looking at Reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy

Jörg Kreienbrock, Chapter One, "'When Things Move upon Bad Hinges': Sterne and Stoicism," from Malicious Objects, Anger Management, and the Question of Modern Literature (2012), 22-66.

Andrew Piper, Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age

Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800 / 1900

Sterne's deconstruction of his relation to two of his major precursors, François Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes (Robert Burton is another precursor).

Swift's deconstruction of both hack writer and state-approved writer and of books for waste paper or toilet paper and books to be saved and stored.

Sterne, Diderot, and Swift's deconstruction of overdoing it and underdoing it.

Craig Dworkin, Reading the Illegible (2003)

Claude Rawson, ed. Jonathan Swift and the Eighteenth Century Book (2014) 

Alvin Kernan, Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print (1987)

Louis Luethi, On the Self-Reflexive Page. Roma Publications (2010) PR851 .B355 2003

Garrett Stewart, Bookwork: Medium to Object to Concept to Art (2011)

Jacques Derrida, deconstruction, textuality, and page layout. Glas. On the page, Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine.

Geoffrey Hartman, "Monsieur Texte: On Jacques Derrida, His Glas," Georgia Review 29 (Winter 1975), pp. 766-89 

and "Monsieur Texte II: Epiphony in Echoland," Georgia Review 30.1. (1976)

J. Hillis Miller, "Destinerrance"

How the Page Appears (pun intended on "appears")

Bonnie Mak, How the Page Matters (Studies in Book and Print Culture)

Lothar Müller, White Magic: The Age of Paper (2014)

Simon Garfield, Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

Woolman, Matt, Type in Motion 2 (No. 2)

Houston, Keith, Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks

Jennifer DeVere Brody, Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play

M. B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West

Nicholas A. Basbanes, On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History

Ian Sansom, Paper: An Elegy

Richard J. Wolfe, Marbled Paper: Its History, Techniques, and Patterns

Kevin McLaughlin, Paperwork: Fiction and Mass Mediacy in the Paper Age 

Kevin McLaughlin, "The Coming of Paper: Aesthetic Value from Ruskin to Benjamin"
MLN, Vol. 114, No. 5, Comparative Literature Issue (Dec., 1999), pp. 962-990

Lisa Gitelman, Paper Knowledge

Antonin Artaud, Margit Rowell, Antonin Artaud: Works on Paper

Jacques Derrida, Artaud le Moma

Jacques Derrida, "The End of the Book," in Of Grammatology

Maurice Blanchot, The Book to Come

Lucien Febvre, Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800

Niels Jorgen Cappelorn, Kirmmse, Bruce H., ed. Written Images: Soren Kierkegaard's Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper

Compare the marbled pages, missing pages, and blacked out pages of Tristram Shandy to pages in Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book

Friedrich Nietzsche on Swift and Sterne in Human, All Too Human, I and II

What is a page? 

Looking at a book entitled ___________ ******* versus reading a ------- ****** ** *****---------- book.

Randall McCleod / Random Cloud essays on "looking" at early modern literature. 

Randall McLeod, “The Birth of Italics” 

Lingua Franca on Randall McLeod

Michael Vande Berg, "Pictures of Pronunciation": Typographical Travels Through Tristram Shandy and Jacques le Fataliste," Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987), 21-47

Wolfgang Iser, Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy, trans. David. Henry Wilson. Landmarks of World Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 

Peter de Voogd, "Tristram Shandy as Aesthetic Object," Word & Image

Peter de Voogd, "Laurence Sterne, the Marbled Page, and the Use of Accidents," Word & Image 1:3 (1985)

Peter de Voogd, "Sterne and Visual Culture," in the Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne Ed. Thomas Keymer (2009)

Christopher Fanning, "On Sterne's Page," Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Volume 10, Number 4, July 1998, pp. 429-450.

Christopher Fanning, "Small Particles of Eloquence: Sterne and the Scriblerian Text," Modern Philology, Vol. 100, No. 3 (February 2003), pp. 360-392 

Christopher Fanning, Sterne and Print Culture," in the Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne Ed. Thomas Keymer (2009)

Viktor Shklovsky, "A Parodying Novel: Sterne's Tristram Shandy"

Roger B. Moss, "Sterne's Punctuation"

Sigmund Burckhardt, "Tristram Shandy's Law of Gravity," ELH, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 1961), pp. 70-88 

Nicolas Nace, "Unprinted Matter: Conceptual Writing and Tristram Shandy's 'Chasm of Ten Pages'" The Shandean 24 (2013)

Zoe Eckman, "Visual Textuality in Tristram Shandy, Print Technologies, and the Future of the Novel," The Shandean 24 (2013)

Peter de Voogd, "The Compleat Marbler," The Shandean

Diana Patterson, "Tristram's Marblings and Marblers," The Shandean 3 (1991), 70-97.

Leann Davis Alspaugh, "Treading Upon the Shroud: Martin Rowson’s Graphic Novel Version of Tristram Shandy," The Shandean

Victor Shkolvsky “The Novel as Parody:  Sterne’s Tristram Shandy” in Theory of Prose, 1991 Dalkey Archive Press, pp. 147-70.

Jonathan Lamb, “Sterne, Sebald, and Siege Architecture," Eighteenth-Century Fiction 19 (2006), 21-41

Helen Moglen, ‘(W)holes and Noses’: Indetermancies in Tristram Shandy,” Literature and Psychology 41 (1995), 44-79

Shaun Regan, “Print Culture in Transition: The Reviewers,Tristram Shandy and the Consumable Text,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 14 (2002), 283-309.  

Pat Rogers, “Zigzagger Shandy: Sterne and the Aesthetics of the Crooked Line,”  Languages of Nature: Critical Essays on Science and Literature, Ed. J.L. Jordanova 1986 117-58

Sharon Seelig, “Sterne, Tristram Shandy, and the Deconstructive Text” in Generating Texts: The Progeny of Seventeenth-Century Prose, 1996, 128-54.

Peter Szendy, À coups de points : La ponctuation comme expérience. Paris : Les Éditions de 

Minuit, 2014. (review)

Donald Ault on punctuation and "unreading" William Blake's "London"

The material text versus the haunted text (or hauntological writing support)

Satire versus madness and nonsense? Or satire as madness, error, stupidity, and self-consciousness?

Anne Bandry-Scubbi, "Point Blank – or Fulfilling Tristram’s Command of ‘Painting’ on the Blank Page" The Shandean

Legibility and illegibility. What is the point of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy? Is there a point? Is pointlessness the point? Productive or abortive boredom.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy as an experiment in random access reading (its lack of plot means reading it page by page, from the first page to the last page, may not be the best way to read it).

Digital reproductions of the first edition of Tristram Shandy. 

Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read

Italo Svevo, Zeno's Conscience