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Sterne's Rabelaisian Fragment: A Text from the Holograph Manuscript

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Melvyn New
Melvyn New*
Affiliation:
University of Florida, Gainesville
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Abstract

Laurence Sterne's “Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais” was first published seven years after Sterne's death. A collation of that edition with the holograph MS preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library reveals that the text is bowdlerized, with no pretense to accuracy or integrity. Moreover, all subsequent reprintings of the fragment, including the standard editions of 1904 and 1927, merely copy this inaccurate text. The edition presented here represents, then, an effort to provide the first true text of Sterne's Rabelaisian fragment. In addition, the Introduction makes use of several canceled passages to argue that the fragment should be dated one year earlier than previously supposed (1759 rather than 1760); if correct, this new date suggests that the fragment was Sterne's first creative attempt after his success with the Political Romance. As such, it deserves a significant place in the Sterne canon.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 87 , Issue 5 , October 1972 , pp. 1083 - 1092
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1972

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References

1 Sterne uses this formula in his Author's Preface, Tristram Shandy, in, Ch. xx: “Now, my dear Anti-Shan-deans, and thrice able critics . . .” (p. 193). It is used by the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais in the prologues to Books I, II, III, and v.

2 A coinage from the Greek, preaching, sermon; cf. the English “kerygma” and “kerystic.”

3 “fairly” in the Medalle ed., iii, 166.

4 Cf. Tristram Shandy: “. . . so that Slawkenbergius his book may properly be considered, not only as a model, —but as a thorough-stitch'd DIGEST and regular institute [see the fragment, fol. 7] of noses; comprehending in it, all that is . . . needful to be known about them . . .” (p. 232). Variants of “thorough-stitch'd” are used by the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais in iii, 325 and v, 18.

5 Cf. Tristram Shandy, i, “Good G—! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time …” (p. 5).

6 Cf. Tristram Shandy, iv, “. . . telling the world a story of a roasted horse . . .” (p. 281). See Cotgrave's Dictionary: s.v. Cicogne: “Contes de la cicogne. Idle histories; vaine relations; tales of a tub, or, of a roasted horse. Cf. Thomas Fuller, A Collection of English Proverbs (London: H. Serjeant [1732?]), No. 2833: ”It amounts to no more than the Tail of a roasted Horse.“

7 “… I know no more of Latin than my horse . . .” in the Medalle ed., iii, 167.

8 Cf. Tristram Shandy, p. 325 and p. 352. The OED cites the latter under the definition : “half (to or by half) the total amount.” The phrase occurs in the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais, iv, 66.

9 Cf. the treatise by the hack author of A Tale of a Tub : “A critical Essay upon the Art of Canting, philosophically, physically, and musically considered.”

10 “my friends” in the Medalle ed., iii, 168.

11 “existed” in the Medalle ed., lit, 168. Cf. the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais, Prologue to Book iv: “. . . as true Cods as ever piss'd” (iv, lxxvi).

12 “pooh, says Panurge” in the Medalle ed., iii, 169.

13 Cf. Tristram Shandy: “. . . and my uncle Toby having some measures to take about his breeches—and Yorick about his fourth general division— … the company broke up . . .” (p. 590).

14 “Curse it” in the Medalle ed., iii, 171.

15 “To take. In cant, to steal.” Johnson's Dictionary. In the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais, iii, 256, Triboulet is described as a “Nimming and filching” fool.

16 The canceled readings here suggest that Sterne's first intention was to have Homenas borrow from the sermons of Dr. John Rogers (1679–1729), the “abovesaid participle Doct.,” whose name conveniently enabled him to indulge in a bawdy play on “Rogering it,” i.e., copulating (see fol. 8). After canceling Rogers, Sterne appears to have written “Norris” (Dr. John Norris, 1657–1711), and then canceled Norris, writing “Clark” alongside. This is undoubtedly Dr. Samuel Clarke (1675–1729). For the extent of Sterne's borrowings from all three divines, see Lansing V. D. H. Hammond, Laurence Sterne's Sermons of Mr Yorick (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1948).

17 Presumably an ethical dative as in Shakespeare, Rom. iii. i. 5–7 : “Thou art like one of these fellows that, when he enters the confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table. …”

18 “. . . anciently a practice to which the authorities of towns, &c, resorted as a sign of distress, or as an alarm to the people.” W. C. Hazlitt, Faiths and Folklore of the British Isles (London: Reeves and Turner, 1905), i, 44.

19 “befouled” in the Medalle ed., iii, 172.

20 Cf. the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais, iv, 176: “. . . the first time that the greedy Thief swallow'd them, they had like to have done his Business.”

21 Cf. Tristram Shandy: “. . . how should I tickle it off” (p. 194). Gardner D. Stout, Jr., notes that the phrase is used by the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais, prologue to Book iv; see “Some Borrowings in Sterne from Rabelais and Cervantes,” ELN, 3 (1965), 113.

22 “ 'Twill be all over with me, by Heav'n—I may as well put the book from whence I took it” in the Medalle ed., iii, 174.

23 Cf. Tristram Shandy, where the critics “tickled off” Tristram's jerkin, “pell mell, helter skelter, ding dong, cut and thrust . . .” (pp. 161–62); and where Toby and Trim mount: “. . . fall in upon them, pell-mell—Ding dong, added Trim.—Horse and foot, said my uncle Toby.—Helter skelter, said Trim . . .” (p. 380). The Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais uses “ding dong” in this manner in v, 99, and v, 146.

24 An interesting anticipation of Sterne's most often quoted line: “God tempers the wind … to the shorn lamb.” See Stout, ed. A Sentimental Journey (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1967), p. 272 and n.

25 Cf. Tristram Shandy: “. . . the baptizing all the HOMUNCULI at once, slap-dash, by injection …” (p. 62). The term is used in the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais, iv, 58.

26 Cf. the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais: “. . . they did eat . . . till their Belly was like to crack with it again” (ii, 112).

27 “Z. . . . ds” in the Medalle ed., iii, 177.

28 Here, and in the canceled passage on fol. 18, Sterne is perhaps recalling the image from the Urquhart-Motteux Rabelais: “Panurge star'd at him like a dead Pig . . .” (v, 30); and: “. . . staring at each other, like so many dead Pigs . . .” (v, 66).

29 “a stool” in the Medalle ed., iii, 179.