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86 TAKESHI SAKAMOTO. Sentiment as Writing Principle: Collected Essays on Laurence Sterne (in Japanese). Kansai: Kansai , 2000. Pp. xviii ⫹ 401. This sophisticated presentation examines minutely how Sterne created his masterpieces. All thirteen chapters originatedinconferencepapersorinJapanese publications. The Preface covers foreign and domestic research on Sterne. An Appendix mentions Soseki Natsume, a leading Japanese novelist and scholar, who may have introduced Tristram Shandy to Japanese readers in 1897. (Achieving so great a success in his first work, I Am a Cat, which might be called one of a very few Japanese biting satirical works, Natsume resigned from his teaching post at Tokyo University.) As the result of rewriting articles, arranging them chronologically according to the life of Sterne, and adding an abridged translation of A Political Romance, Mr. Sakamoto creates an account of the novelist as well as of his literary achievements. Chapters cover Sterne’s writing career as it begins with A Political Romance; how his creative techniques were cultivated through writing The Sermons of Mr. Yorick; Sterne’s sentimentality, humor and humanity; Shandeism; his narrative techniques as a storyteller in the case of Tristram, the influence of Locke and the association of ideas; the difference between Sterne and Austen especially in terms of narrative technique; and, in a powerful and subtle analysis of Tristram Shandy, Sterne’s attitude toward human rights in his relationship with Ignatius Sancho, a former slave in the age of the bluestockings. Mr. Sakamoto also discussesSterne’s‘‘image of nature’’ and the narrative technique of A Sentimental Journey, and his images of love and death at the time of writing The Journal to Eliza. As the title of Mr. Sakamoto’s book suggests, Sterne’s character is reflected not only in his life but in his work. Mr. Sakamoto could have included more of Sterne’s sermons than ‘‘The Prodigal Son,’’ but the most successful examinations treat Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey. Each chapter carefully analyzes narrative technique in reference to the problems of a self-conscious narrator and a narrator-hero, revealing a different narrator-character relationship from that of Sterne’s contemporaries, notably Fielding. Mr. Sakamoto considers Sterne’s characteristicdigressionsunique to his narrative method. This book might be undervalued or little known because it is in Japanese. It is a pity, because readers will miss a pithy and intriguing study. Tatehiko Noguchi Doshisha University Laurence Sterne. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Tim Parnell. London: Dent, 2000. Pp. xxv ⫹ 643. $7.95 (paper). Advertising copy for this new Everyman Tristram promotes ‘‘the most comprehensive paperback edition available.’’ It contains, in addition to an introductory essay by the editor, a chronology of Sterne’s life and times, notes, a glossary of military terms, selected criticism and text summaries, all of which makes it a sound choice for the general reader and undergraduate. Two chronologies and text summaries make it easy to find a lost event. The text is based on Saintsbury’s 1912 Everyman edition, checked against the Florida edition, and aside from small changes (modernizing the long s, removing the running quotation marks), 87 Sterne’s original prose is left intact. Mr. Parnell has ‘‘taken advantage of the rediscovery of the manuscript of the ‘Le Fever’ episode,’’ which turned up in the British Library in 1990 (see The Scriblerian , 23, Spring 1991, 165–174), and this gives us (in VI. x) a Le Fever who looks up into Toby’s face ‘‘wistfully’’ rather than ‘‘wishfully’’ (a significant change also made by the editors of the recent 1997 Penguin edition). The text of the Sorbonne ‘‘Mémoire’’ is ‘‘based on the first edition rather than Sterne’s source’’ and the translation by Jane Desmarais is better than either Work’s (followed in the Florida and Penguin editions ) or Anderson’s. Differences are minor, but Desmarais’s translation of ‘‘petite canulle’’as‘‘smalltube’’isfinally better than Work’s awkward ‘‘little injection -pipe,’’ and more sensible than either Anderson’s ‘‘small nozzle’’ or Ross’s ‘‘squirt.’’ Mr. Parnell’s notes run to 72 pages and are weighted, appropriately and following in the tradition of Work, toward explanations of eighteenth-century practices , words, and events. These make up over half of the 106 notes...

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