Illustrating Sterne

Laurence Sterne's printed pages, striking in and of themselves, draw a reader's attention to their surface even as the linguistic text demands that the reader ignore that surface and explore an abstract representation of ideas and a fictional reality—a depth implied beneath the surface. The nature of Sterne's interests in these surfaces and depths is simultaneously philosophical and satirical. Tristram Shandy does not shy away from questioning its own medium; it stresses the troubles caused by the imprecision of words—their opacity, their polyvalence—and praises the directness of the visual: "The eye . . . has the quickest commerce with the soul,—gives a smarter stroke, and leaves something more inexpressible upon the fancy, than words can either convey—or sometimes get rid of."¹ Readers have long noted Sterne's emphasis on gesture and nonverbal communication. The irony is that such an emphasis on the non-verbal should be made in the verbal medium itself. This has made it all the more intriguing and inviting to the reader, and Sterne, by "halv[ing] this matter amicably" (125), leaves as much as possible to the reader's imagination.

How does an individual reader respond to such an invitation? How does the culture from which that reader comes inform his or her response? One way of approaching these questions is to examine the visual representations of Sterne's verbal texts. W. B. Gerard offers a history of such representations, starting with Hogarth's commissioned illustrations of 1760, and extending through hundreds of book illustrations, paintings and drawings, prints, and other media (e.g., stoneware and ephemeral commercial products), all cataloged in the book's fifty-page appendix.

In the first of two introductory chapters, Gerard deals with "the visual elements within Sterne's text" (2), noting that Sterne's character descriptions do not possess the detail or depth of those in Fielding or Smollett. Rather, Sterne encourages his reader, guided by a certain set of abstract cues—especially sympathetic appeal, but also appeal to theoretical aspects of the visual arts—to create an image of a character that is more powerful for the lack of delineation in the text. In discussing Sterne's technique, Gerard does not devote much attention to contemporary eighteenth-century thought on the subject of mimesis and aesthetic experience. He cites Jean Hagstrum's study of the sister arts, but there is little direct engagement with writers like Joseph Addison, whose consideration of the pleasures of the imagination—as explicated by critics like Murray Krieger, or, with specific reference to Sterne, by Jonathan Lamb—would have provided a relevant reference point by which to chart Sterne's practice.² This aspect of Sterne and the Visual Imagination lessens its appeal to those outside of Shandean circles.

There is a brief chapter on methodology that attempts to establish the grounds for discussing book illustration, addressing some theoretical issues concerning relations among text, imagination, and picture, using "visual representations generated by [Sterne's] words" (2). This is unfortunately brief, moving from ancient cave paintings, and their relation to the idiosyncrasies of the cave medium, to visual renderings of modern literary texts in very short scope. Gerard here declares allegiance to a principle of objective description, which will develop into a somewhat labored style over the succeeding chapters. He also makes the valid assertion that an illustration of a textual account is an interpretation that has some resonance with a larger culture in which readers are situated.

Three chapters of readings offer a new way of mapping the reception history of Sterne's work. In a consideration of Tristram Shandy's sermon-reading scene, Gerard uses eight pictorial representations (from 1883 to 1995) to chart the resurgence of interest in Sterne after the disapproving Victorian era. Early in this period, we find efforts to recuperate Sterne through the taming of his edgy humor. Illustrators avoid using icons representing comic aspects of the work (e.g., the grandfather clock, or the walking stick) so as to provide a...