Laurence Sterne’s a sentimental journey : an introspection into the private, emotional self.

Abstract

Literary critic, John Richetti, views the sentimental novel as a form of escapism, “The sentimental novel that flourishes from the 1740s onwards reveals a similar confusion in its approach to social problems. By cultivating private sympathy and self-indulgent emotional responses to misery and injustice, fiction offers a controlling evasion or consoling moral gesture that stands in place of analytical understanding or systemic criticism” (Richetti 244). Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey intervenes in the novel genre, but more specifically it formally counteracts the escapism seen as characteristic of sentimental literature. In contrast, I argue that the sentimental novel can play a supportive role in expanding the reader's awareness of his public and private self through the various sentimental experiences undertaken by the novel's protagonist. While the sentimental novel may be a form of escapism from the public world and its affairs, on the other hand it encourages a critical analysis of the personal and private self by highlighting the complex interplay between reason and passion in the private, emotional self. Thus, sentimental novels can act as a form of self-reflection, and also a rejuvenating process for individuals who begin to have a closer understanding of their sense of self against the backdrop of the social and political backgrounds that they are rooted in.