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A Sentimental Journey through France and…
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A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768)

by Laurence Sterne

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
1,723249,967 (3.2)1 / 110
This 250 year old novel was a fictional satire on a more serious non-fictional account of a journey through France and Italy by Sterne's contemporary Tobias Smollett. The satire is in the fact that the traveller here (Yorick, a minor character in Sterne's most famous novel The Life and Adventures of Tristram Shandy) is entirely uninterested in seeing the famous sights, more in meeting and bickering with a motley collection of monks, innkeepers and aristocrats and flirting with various women he meets. Sterne died in 1768 before completing this book, so Yorick never actually makes it to Italy, and the novel finishes with him awkwardly discussing sleeping arrangements with a lady and her maid when there are only two proper beds available. Quite funny, with a few slightly rambling diversions. ( )
  john257hopper | Aug 2, 2020 |
English (20)  Dutch (2)  Spanish (1)  All languages (23)
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Written about a naughty vicar by a naughty vicar. Hysterical the greatest ending ever! ( )
  Twisk | Oct 2, 2023 |
Yeah, just not a fan. If it had been any longer, I wouldn't have finished it. ( )
  AliceAnna | Sep 28, 2022 |
This 250 year old novel was a fictional satire on a more serious non-fictional account of a journey through France and Italy by Sterne's contemporary Tobias Smollett. The satire is in the fact that the traveller here (Yorick, a minor character in Sterne's most famous novel The Life and Adventures of Tristram Shandy) is entirely uninterested in seeing the famous sights, more in meeting and bickering with a motley collection of monks, innkeepers and aristocrats and flirting with various women he meets. Sterne died in 1768 before completing this book, so Yorick never actually makes it to Italy, and the novel finishes with him awkwardly discussing sleeping arrangements with a lady and her maid when there are only two proper beds available. Quite funny, with a few slightly rambling diversions. ( )
  john257hopper | Aug 2, 2020 |
Superb production! ( )
  Glacierman | Mar 10, 2019 |
Interesting fact (while I wait to write my review proper): Laurence Sterne met author Tobias Smollett (of 'The Expedition of Humphry Clinker' fame) in 1764. Sterne was struck by how critical Smollett was of the places he visited; so when Stern came to write A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, the moaning and griping character of Smelfungus was modelled after Smollett; much in the same way John Cleese's modelled Basil Fawlty after a hotel manager who made the Python's lives miserable during filming some years earlier.
It is for this reason that I may one day put pen to paper myself. ;)

Ref: http://www.dictionary.com/e/s/12-insults-we-should-bring-back/#smellfungus
  Sylak | May 28, 2018 |
A Sentimental Journey is the story of a man traveling from England to France and back and his adventures, or should I say, his encounters during the trip. We don't get a lot of "travel" descriptions, but rather descriptions of the carriages he takes, how he hires them, his servant, and the ladies he meets and endeavors to get to know better on the journey. It is 'sentimental' in the sense of a journal of his sentiments towards the women, the servants, the places he goes. Fairly short. ( )
1 vote Marse | May 19, 2018 |
I was thoroughly puzzled by this book. There was no introduction and no conclusion, and the middle was all stream of consciousness type ramblings about random things that happened to our narrator, Yorick, as he traveled around France and Italy. This was not what I was expecting at all. Also, what little character development I was able to pick up all centered around how much Yorick likes the ladies. Not a very likable character. I have to give this one 2 stars for the confusion factor alone. ( )
  AmandaL. | Jan 16, 2016 |
As I mentioned before about Laurence Sterne, after I have read his books I wish I could write like him! ( )
  Benedict8 | Jul 16, 2014 |
Sometimes, you read a book that is widely acclaimed as a classic, a masterpiece, a part of the literary canon, and your reaction is "Eh", or possibly "Meh". That's my reaction to "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy", which was a hit after it was published in 1768, and has been finding readers for almost 250 years. When something like this happens, I assume that the problem isn't with the novel, it's with me. I couldn't get involved in the book, but that may be because I depend too much on narrative tension, and not enough on just being there. Also, I couldn't figure out what was going on at times: again, I may be too literal. For those who like this sort of thing, this is clearly the sort of thing they like. Hats off to them: I am not up to it. ( )
  annbury | Feb 5, 2014 |
Another great example of why you need to really think about what a book's trying to do before you judge it. This is nice and subtle- on the one hand, it tugs the heart-strings unashamedly; on the other hand, it makes ruthless fun of you for having your heart-string tugged. Great stuff- unless you're expecting well rounded three dimensional characters and believable plot turns and a coherent narrative and so on. Not here, friendo. Here you get intriguing reflections on the general goodness/evilness of humankind, and jokes at the expense of people who think you can make general reflections on morality in that way. I wish he'd been able to add a couple of volumes to it; the whole enterprise is so clever and so much less brow-beating than Tristram Shandy that it might've ended up being one of the best books I'd read. As is, it's pretty darn-tootin good. ( )
  stillatim | Dec 29, 2013 |
Within the genre of travelogues, two approaches can be distinguished. There are those authors who describe fore-mostly the places, and the habits of the people they visit, from an anthropological point of view, and there are those who describe the people they meet on their travels from a more humanistic point of view, as equals, so to speak. An example of the first type of travelogue would be Daniel Defoe's A tour through the whole island of Great Britain, which was published in 1724. Laurence Sterne's fictional A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy was published a few decades later in 1768. By this time, travel to the continent had become fashionable.

In Sterne's A sentimental journey, his alter ego Yorick, which contemporary readers would know as a clergyman, travels to Paris, supposedly on his way to Italy. However, the story develops very slowly, and for the larger part the story is set in the environs of Paris, indicated but scantily.

If the book is humourous or witty, it is not clear in which way. Supposedly, various sketches or situation would be humourous to contemporaries of Sterne but the humour is lost on contemporary readers. In fact, A sentimental journey seems a rather boring little book, and all pleasure to be had from it can only be found by studying the introduction carefully which explains where to look for it. Even then, the notes in the annotated Penguin edition merely clarified what should already be clear to the educated reader, while leaving many possible clues unexplained. ( )
  edwinbcn | Dec 23, 2013 |
Apparently there’s a movement in literature (and probably elsewhere in the arts) called sentimentalism. I read a bit about it and didn’t really understand it. I read this and didn’t really understand it either. Sterne is not known for this particular book being much better known for his Tristram Shandy novel which I’ve not read. If this is anything to go by, I’m not looking forward to that much.

Written on his deathbed, the novelist has one last foray into Europe on the picaresque bandwagon. Having read Peregrine Pickle, I’ve been here before and felt no great longing to return.

Granted, this was a bit more polished with the humour more wry and less slapstick. But there’s only so much one can get up to on these adventures. And, as I’ve said more than once before, satire is more for your peers than posterity.

The best part of the novel was the very last line, made even more skillful by the fact that it was his last published work. He died less than a month after it was completed. ( )
  arukiyomi | Jan 2, 2013 |
Sterne wanders around talking to swindlers and fops and very nice peasant folk, and keeps getting terribly attracted to women who he tells us of COURSE he did nothing with! A nice bit o' life-loving fluff from the guy who brought us Tristram Shandy. Too bad he didn't get to get into it further before he died. ( )
  Snakeshands | Jul 30, 2011 |
This is the tale of a monk, Yorick, who embarks on a journey across the English Channel to Calais and on to Paris. He then sets out through France towards Italy, meeting a variety of characters and getting into tricky situations along the way, and that is as far as the story gets. Unfortunately the author, Laurence Sterne, succumbs to consumption before he has finished his book.

The book was first published in 1768 so pre-dates the golden age of classic literature. The language is hard to grasp to begin with although the story begins to flow better as the book goes on. The book has some humour in it and is one of the earliest forms of travel writing by the leisurely tourist - perhaps Sterne was the Bill Bryson of his day.

I can't say I enjoyed this book. I can see that it stands as an early example of travel writing and is of interest to anyone who enjoyed Sterne's other work, principally Tristram Shandy (which I haven't read) but, for me, it didn't stand up as a novel to be read for pleasure. It ends so abruptly that I wondered what the point was of reading it at all. I was looking forward to an insight into 18th century France and Italy and I didn't really get that. ( )
1 vote tortoisebook | Jun 13, 2011 |
The review refers to this edition:
The Carlton Classics, 152pp, London : John Long Ltd., 1923

A came across this little book by chance, an unassuming small 8vo hardback but carefully made, even a ribbon-marker sewed in, the smooth green and fairly ugly buckram brightened up by the publisher’s emblem in gold on the front that shows a snake curled around the letters J L and what presumably is an image of the tree of knowledge, holding a goblet in its mouth, tempting you, the reader, to drink from it.

The edition is edited with a Biographical Introduction by Hannaford Bennett and been given an Index. This the editor must have added as none of the earlier editions I consulted include it; curiously, it lists only the Chapter headings and these in alphabetical order. Did Mr. Hannaford Bennett want to amuse himself and edit the edition in the playful spirit of Sterne? But an error: - the location for the chapter ‘The Riddle’ is given as Calais, it should be Paris - is repeated in the Index. His oversight? And at the end of ‘The Rose – Paris’, what reads in the 2nd edition of 1768: ‘Rien que pisser’ and two lines further on: ‘to let Madame de Rambouliet p...ss on.’, is given out of pudency as: ‘Rien que …’, and: ‘to let Madame Rambouliet …;’. This 2nd edition of 1768 (Vol. I, London: Becket & De Hondt) lists alphabetically the subscribers, 281 names in all, some with multiple subscriptions e.g. 20 sets to Mr. Crew, 5 sets to Mr. Ogilby etc., so perhaps 400 sets altogether.

The first 2 volumes of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy of what was planned to be a 4 volume work were published shortly before Sterne’s death in 1768. So it remains unfinished and the protagonist, Yorick, Sterne’s alter ego, never reaches Italy. It is one of the first travel books but quite unlike any that follows (but then, after all, Sterne wrote it). Yorick, after listing all classes of travellers, calls himself a ‘Sentimental Traveller’. What he means by this he explains in his own words:

"It is for this reason, Monsieur le Comte, continued I, that I have not seen the Palais Royal nor the Luxembourg, - nor the Façade of the Louvre, - nor have attempted to swell the catalogues we have of pictures, statues, and churches. I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings, and loose sketches, hung up in it, than the transfiguration of Raphael itself.

The thirst of this, continued I, as impatient as that which inflames the breast of the connoisseur, has led me from my own home into France, and from France will lead me through Italy ;-‘tis a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of Nature, and those affections which arise out of her, which make us love each other, - and the world, better than we do."

So it is his encounters, not with famous landmarks, but with men and women, Yorick talks about, foremost with women, because each one stirs his heart. Sterne’s unique prose cannot be read in haste, it demands time and leisure and the taste of each sentence. What I like best is a hint shining through of Yorick/Sterne laughing about himself. I will re-read Tristram Shandy. (VI-VII-10) ( )
  MeisterPfriem | Jul 13, 2010 |
Not quite Tristram Shandy. But then again, what is? ( )
  prophetandmistress | Mar 25, 2009 |
"we neither know nor care whether Laurence Sterne really went to France, whether he was there accosted by the poor Franciscan, at first rebuked him unkindly, and then gave him a peace offering: or whether the whole be not a fiction. In either case we equally are sorrowful at the rebuke, and secretly resolve we will never do so: we are pleased with the subsequent atonement, and view with emulation a soul candidly acknowleging it's fault and making a just reparation." - Thomas Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, 3 Aug. 1771 [PTJ 1:76-81]
3 vote ThomasJefferson | Sep 10, 2007 |
Less of a travelogue and more a series of sketches, somewhat erotic stories, amusing or pathetic incidents, philosophical musings, and anecdotes of all kinds. Sterne is also the author of Tristram Shandy.
  tripleblessings | Feb 2, 2007 |
A serialized 'Tristam Shandy' made the rural vicar 'passing rich' and the talk of London. He balanced these with The Sermons of Mr. Yorick, a title apparently drawn from the 'fellow of infinite jest'. In 1762-64 and 1765-66, Sterne traveled through France and Italy. We find here the pretty observations and naif adages of a man who understood that the real criminals in our society are the bores. One of the favorite apothegms of everyone except a good many people, is: 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb'. I know, you thought it was Biblical.... ( )
  keylawk | Sep 12, 2006 |
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  ajapt | Dec 30, 2018 |
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