Arbitrary Government: Tristram Shandy and the Crisis of Whig History
@article{Havard2014ArbitraryGT, title={Arbitrary Government: Tristram Shandy and the Crisis of Whig History}, author={John Owen Havard}, journal={ELH}, year={2014}, volume={81}, pages={585 - 613} }
Although David Hume asserted that Tristram Shandy had escaped the turbulence that overwhelmed the early reign of George III by way of a distinctly “Shandean” obliviousness, Sterne’s novel cannot be so straightforwardly extricated from the growing political upheaval. While critics have connected the novel to transatlantic debates over heredity and identified partisan targets behind its character portraits, this essay argues for returning Sterne’s novel wholesale to the debates over governance…
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