How The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman drew on Gulliver’s Travels
A documented line of influence: Laurence Sterne demonstrably engaged Jonathan Swift’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift · 1726
EnlightenmentThe influenced
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne · 1759
EnlightenmentRelevance
6/10
On The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’s page
- Tristram Shandy sits squarely in the satiric line of Swift, alongside Rabelais and Cervantes — Gulliver's Travels had made learned-wit comedy the English standard
- Read Swift first for the satirical tradition Sterne inherited, then watch him push it to the edge of the form
On Gulliver’s Travels’s page
- Gulliver's Travels set the standard for English learned-wit satire that Sterne would build on a generation later
- The two are routinely paired as the great prose satires of the English 18th century — Swift's the model, Tristram Shandy the wild extension