Companionship

I picked up the brand new Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne (Ed. Keymer, Thomas) at the 2009 CSECS/NASECS Conference in Ottawa this past November, and am selectively making my way through it. The opening article by Sterne biographer Ian Campbell Ross has, so far, impressed me the most. Tim Parnell's chapter on the Sermons is also pretty great. Also notable is Christopher Fanning's "Sterne and Print Culture" (Fanning presented his work on Burke, Sterne, and aesthetics at the conference, while I tried to track down Thomas Keymer to autograph my Companion, no success there). Chapters 11 and 12 (modernist moments and post-colonialism) I could respectfully do without, but are helpful nonetheless. Also worth mentioning is the chapter by Peter de Voogd (editor of The Shandean) on "Sterne and Visual Culture".

"Although capable of generous acts of private charity, Sterne was widely considered by strait-laced neigbours as ill-suited to the cloth, not only for occasional neglect of his clerical duties but, above all, for his ill-concealed and eventually notorious sexual liasons with his servants (his wife once discovered him in bed with their maid) and prostitutes in York" (Ross, 8).

(painting: Yorick and the Grisette, scene from ASJ, Gilbert Stuart Newton, 19th century)

"Trust me, my dear Eugenius, I should have said, ''there are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman's pulse.' ... The beautiful grisette looked sometimes at the gloves, then sideways to the window, then at the gloves, and then at me ... She looked into my very heart and reins. It may seem strange; but I could actually feel she did" (A Sentimental Journey, 60-63).