M&D little dinky spoiler [364]

[Alan Westrope]

On Wed, 14 May 1997 21:19:19 -0400, Paul York <psyork at english.umass.edu> wrote:
>*****a you-know-what comin' up*****
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>For what it's worth, I was more than pleased to stumble on a nod towards 
>Sterne's _Tristam Shandy_ on pg. 364:  "Mr. Knockwood, the landlord, a 
>sort of trans-Elemental Uncle Toby [...]

Ditto.  I found it interesting that the narrator (and I think it's
still clearly Rev. Cherrycoke here, TRP still pretty much adhering
to convention at this point) has read Sterne's novel, which was
published in 1760.  Hence, our Narrator is familiar with Sterne's
proto-postmodern techniques like playing with the flow of Time (e.g.,
the Time of the characters in the novel vs. the Time of the omniscient
Author writing about these characters vs. the Time of the reader).  In
this sense, I think it's more than just a "bow" to Sterne from TRP -- I
think it's meant to impart an important detail about our Narrator.

The question of who is "really" narrating this story keeps getting more
and more fascinating, though -- I may retract all this before I'm done.

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered,

-- 
Alan Westrope     PGP public key:  http://www.crl.com/~awestrop
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