French Literature Reviews - 2026

Agrégation. A Study of Tristram Shandy.
Novel and Narrative Prose

Anne Bandry-Scubbi, Madeleine Descargues-Grant
Tristram Shandy. Laurence Sterne

Armand Colin - CNED
Collection "Capes - Agrégation"
Paris, 2006
Isbn: 2-200-34737-5
Ean 13 : 9782200347376
150 pages
17,00 €

Publisher's Description:

The sudden appearance of Tristram Shandy on the literary scene in 1760 caused a sensation.
This baffling and provocative book, at the crossroads of classical culture and modernity, has sparked mixed reactions for two and a half centuries. By laying bare narrative techniques, it questions the nature of literature and has often been adopted as a model by proponents of deconstruction. Yet its sentimental vignettes also had their heyday. Sterne liked to say that a letter addressed to "Tristram Shandy, Europe" would reach him, wherever he might be.
The publication of the text, spread out from 1759 to 1767, forced him to constantly reinvent his literary devices to maintain his reputation for originality—a relevance that persists today in the era of hypertext, postmodern adaptations, and ongoing questions about the legacy of the novel and the future of fiction.

Contents:

A Dashing Writer A Dashing Narrator Life and Digressions Progressive and Digressive Sterne's Way Reverend Sterne and Parson Yorick Epistemological Sterne "Nothing unmixt in this world" Tristram Shandy as Hot Chestnut

Anne Bandry-Scubbi is a professor at the University of Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse. She has published numerous works on the reception of Laurence Sterne, as well as computer-assisted textual analyses of 18th-century English authors (Defoe, Haywood, Swift, Sterne).

Madeleine Descargues-Grant is a professor at the University of Haut-Cambresis, Valenciennes. She is the author of Correspondances (Didier 1994), on Sterne's letters, and Prédicateurs et journalistes (Septentrion, 2004), on the essays and sermons of Swift, Addison, Fielding, and Sterne. She co-edited Les Sources anglaises de l'Encyclopédie (Presses Universitaires de Valenciennes, 2005).

Their research on Sterne and 18th-century English literature has run in parallel.

Tristram Shandy was published in instalments between 1759 and 1767. The sudden appearance of the book on the literary scene in 1760 caused a sensation, and it has sparked mixed reactions for two and a half centuries. By laying bare narrative techniques, it questions the nature of literature and has often been adopted as a model by proponents of deconstruction, while its sentimental vignettes also had their heyday. Laurence Sterne liked to say that a letter addressed to Tristram Shandy, Europe would reach him, wherever he might be.

This volume on Laurence Sterne's work was edited by Anne Bandry-Scubbi and Madeleine Descargues-Grant for the Armand Colin - CNED Collection Capes - Agrégation and published in Paris in 2006. The contents include sections on the writer, the narrator, life and digressions, Reverend Sterne and parson Yorick, and epistemological aspects. Anne Bandry-Scubbi is a professor at the University of Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse, and Madeleine Descargues-Grant is a professor at the University of Haut-Cambresis, Valenciennes. Readers interested in eighteenth-century literature may find it relevant.