1. STERNE'S SYSTEM OF IMITATION.
- Author
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Lamb, Jonathan
- Subjects
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LITERARY style , *IMITATION in literature , *CREATIVE ability , *LITERARY characters , *NOVELISTS , *ORIGINALITY - Abstract
The article focuses on the literary writing style of a novelist Laurence Sterne. A true imitator does much more than simply spatchcock other texts into his own, or dutifully give a foreign idea an agreeable turn: other men's thoughts are not a supplement to his own but the very means by which his own thought takes place. At its most utilitarian Sterne's borrowing on his hero's behalf is merely a way of finding convenient sources of recondite information with which to ornament a theme like love, education, or death. These days it is usual to concentrate on his originality, his contempt for rules, his debunking of conventions, his readiness to experiment with the novel-form, in short his modernism. By contrast, those critics who have studied the texts and methods he used to supplement his originality have tended to conclude that he had an old-fashioned taste for literature and wit and that what is odd about him is what is out of date. The imitative component in hobbyhorses is what makes them such apt instruments for character-drawing because it exhibits what the character wishes to present of himself and it also is the means of turning his inside outward.
- Published
- 1981
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