Sterne's Sermons

Reviews Sterne's Sermons MARTHA F. BOWDEN The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, vol 4. The Sermons of Laurence Sterne: The Text. Edited by Melvyn New Gainesville: University Press of Florida 1996.424 The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, vol 5. The Sermons of Laurence Sterne: The Notes. By Melvyn New Gainesville: University Press of Florida 1996. xxvi, 512 The new edition of the sermons of Laurence Sterne, contained in the fourth and fifth volumes of the Florida edition of the works of Sterne and edited by Melvyn New, provide the context, theological, biographical, literary, and social, which is so necessary to an informed reading of these texts. Claiming that 'few documents have been more poorly read' because the reader comes to them looking for evidence of Tristram or Yorick, and not the rector of Sutton-on-the-Forest or Coxwold, New turns the process around, claiming that we should instead look for theology in Tristram Shandy. And while originality continues to be one of the most striking characteristics of his novel, Sterne's sermons sprang from a recognizable Anglican tradition, a context which New has been able to establish through an extensive reading ofseventeenth- and eighteenth-centurysermons. Thus, the characterstudies like the one of Peter in Sermon 31, thought to exemplify Sterne's 'uniqueness as a "psychological" observer,' draw from a well of homiletic sources and are not unique to the creator of Tristram, Yorick, and Uncle Toby. The edition retains the original publication order of the sermons, which came out in seven volumes, the first four in Sterne's own lifetime and the final three after his death, edited by his daughter Lydia and John Hall-Stevenson. This approach, wrole fulfilling the editor's responsibility to present a text that reflects as much as possible the intentions of the author, results in some rather startling anachronisms; Sermon 17, dating from 1764 and possibly the second to the last Sterne ever preached, comes before the sermon on the occasion of the Recession of George lJl in 1760. But in fact a strict chronological ordering of the texts is impossible because in many cases the dates of composition are unknown. Thus while one cannot read them for evidence of Sterne's development as a preacher, it is possible to see in them Sterne's own UNlVERSlTY OF TORONTO QUAltT£::ltLY, VOLUME 67, NUMIlER 3, SUMMER 1998 726 MARTHA F. BOWDEN reflections on his work and his ordering of it for publication. It may come as a surprise to readers of Tristram Shandy that the Abuses of Conscience sermon which appears in the second volume of the novel and serves as a prepublication advertisement for the sermons is in fact the last sermon in the last volume Sterne himself saw through the presses. Despite the first two volumes' double title page - the first stating 'The sermons of Mr. Yorick/ the second with his own name on it - the piece most closely tied to Mr Yorick does not appear in it. These volumes will help to dispel the commonly perceived paradox inherent in the author of a book like Tristram Shandy being a Church of England clergyman, a paradox supported by misperceptions of both the book and the man himself. In Sterne's own lifetime, the public found much to bemuse them in the spectacle, as Sterne was well aware; the double title page was intended to deflect incipient criticism: 'the first wHi serve the bookseller'S purpose, as Yorick's name is possibly of the two the more known; - and the second will ease the minds of those who see a jest, and the danger which lurks under it, where no jest was meant.' The danger lurking in jest is both a recognition of the author's situation and a reflection back on the character, whose jesting nature resulted in his own demise. As New points out, the humour in the sermons does not exist past thesecond paragraph; having roused his congregation with a jest, the preacher takes advantage of their attention to explicate the orthodoxy ot his day. John Wilkes, whom New describes as 'England's first professional nonbeliever,' remarks on Sterne's sermon...