was published in February 1768. Less than a month later, its author Laurence Sterne was dead, succumbing at the age of 54 to the tuberculosis which had weakened him for years. He had completed only two of the four projected volumes of
A Sentimental Journey, which has often been seen as Sterne’s wry and poignant farewell to the world. Usually classified as a novel, it is a lightly fictionalized travelogue narrated in fragmentary chapters by Parson Yorick – Sterne’s own alter ego – describing his somewhat dilatory journey through France. At one point, Yorick observes wistfully that “I think there is a fatality in it – I seldom go to the place I set out for” (131); the journey breaks off at the end of Volume II (in the midst of a…
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Citation: Turner, Katherine. "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 May 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6994, accessed 26 November 2024.]
