Labyrinth of Digressions

Labyrinth of Digressions

Author: René Bosch

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 940120506X

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With their appearance during the 1760s, the five instalments of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman caused something like a booksellers’ hype. Small publishers and anonymous imitators seized on Sterne’s success by bringing out great numbers of spurious new volumes, critical or ironic pamphlets, and works that in style and title express a congeniality with Tristram Shandy. This study explores these eighteenth-century imitations as indicators of contemporary assumptions about Sterne’s intentions. Comparisons between the original, the first reactions, and a number of late eighteenth-century imitations, show that Tristram Shandy was initially read against the background of Augustan and Grub-street satire. The earliest imitators harked back to traditions of banter and folklore, bawdy and grotesque humour, pathetic stories and orthodox religiosity, reaffirming a pattern of moral and aesthetic values that was conservative for its time. Philosophical Sentimentalism appears to have been a late development. It is also argued that, partly because of their bad reputation, some of the authors of forgeries and parodies had a greater influence on the original than the reviewers to whom Sterne is often said to have listened. The imitators followed leads and themes in the first instalments, developing them according to their own conception of Sterne’s project and the reasons for his success. As a consequence, they unintentially put a pressure on Sterne to alter his course, and even to abandon some of the narrative lines and themes he had set out for himself. The literature section contains a chronological checklist of English eighteenth-century Sterneana.


Eulogy on King Philip

Eulogy on King Philip

Author: William Apes

Publisher: Graphic Arts Books

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 35

ISBN-13: 1513288407

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Eulogy on King Philip (1836) is a speech by William Apes. An indentured servant, soldier, minister, and activist, Apes lived an uncommonly rich life for someone who died at just 41 years of age. Recognized for his pioneering status as a Native American public figure, William Apes was an astute recorder of a life in between. His Eulogy on King Philip celebrates the Wampanoag sachem also known as Metacomet, whose attempt to live in peace with the Plymouth colonists ended in brutal warfare. “[A]s the immortal Washington lives endeared and engraven on the hearts of every white in America, never to be forgotten in time- even such is the immortal Philip honored, as held in memory by the degraded but yet grateful descendants who appreciate his character; so will every patriot, especially in this enlightened age, respect the rude yet all accomplished son of the forest, that died a martyr to his cause, though unsuccessful, yet as glorious as the American Revolution.” Long considered an enemy of the American people, a rebel whose head was left on a pike for years in Plymouth, King Philip remained a hero to his descendants. In this fiery speech, Pequot activist William Apes portrays Philip as an impassioned defender of his people whose assassination and martyrdom serve as a reminder of the brutality of the early colonists. For Apes, a leader of the nonviolent Mashpee Revolt of 1833, Philip was a symbol of indigenous resistance whose legacy remained strategically misunderstood and misrepresented in American history. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of William Apes’ Eulogy on King Philip is a classic of Native American literature reimagined for modern readers.