Home Literary Studies ‘Doing’ Things with Words. Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy und die Praxis des narrativen Sprechaktes
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‘Doing’ Things with Words. Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy und die Praxis des narrativen Sprechaktes

  • Andreas Mahler
Published/Copyright: July 14, 2009
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From the journal Volume 127 Issue 1

Abstract

Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy begins with an act of conception. But what is conceived in the first chapter is not so much the result of a sexual but that of a performative act. Drawing on a (long-neglected) systematization of narrative speech acts (or ‘modes’), the present article shows how Tristram-the-narrator, in reporting speech and thereby surreptitiously including the very act of his creation, textually (and paradoxically) self-begets a Tristram-as-character, which serves Sterne as a source of (potentially) endless textual play before it is brought to a halt again by an arbitrary act of (self-)annihilation.

Published Online: 2009-07-14
Published in Print: 2009-June

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  1. A Demilitarized Saint: Ælfric's Life of St. Sebastian
  2. Ireland, Literature, and Truth: Heideggerian Themes in “The Dead”
  3. ‘Doing’ Things with Words. Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy und die Praxis des narrativen Sprechaktes
  4. ‘Les Plus Rudes Chocs de la Fortune’: Willem Frederik, Stadholder of Friesland (1613 – 1664), Thomas Killigrew (1612 – 1683) and Patronage in Exile
  5. The Earliest Occurrence of Old English gerīm and Its Anglo-Irish Computistical Context
  6. Altenglisch scepen in Cædmons Hymnus (M)
  7. Corpus Linguistics 25 Years On, ed. Roberta Facchinetti
  8. Bells Chiming from the Past: Cultural and Linguistic Studies on Early English, ed. Isabel Moskowich - Spiegel & Begoña Crespo - García
  9. Cædmon's Hymn and Material Culture in the World of Bede. Six Essays, ed. Allen J. Frantzen & John Hines
  10. The Apocrypha, ed. Frederick M. Biggs
  11. The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, ed. Aaron J Kleist
  12. The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, gen. ed. Peter Hoare. Vol. I: To 1640, ed. Elisabeth Leedham - Green & Teresa Webber; Vol. II: 1640–1850, ed. Giles Mandelbrote & K. A. Manley; Vol. III: 1850–2000, ed. Alistair Black & Peter Hoare
  13. The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Vol. II: 1100–1400, ed. Nigel Morgan & Rodney M. Thomson
  14. Frances McCormack, Chaucer and the Culture of Dissent: The Lollard Context and Subtext of the Parson's Tale
  15. Marleen Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse: A Study of London, British Library, MS Additional 37790
  16. Sex, Aging, & Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52, Its Texts, Language, and Scribe, ed. M. Teresa Tavormina
  17. Barbara Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque. Dance, Costume and Music
  18. Astrid Erll, Prämediation – Remediation: Repräsentationen des indischen Aufstandes in imperialen und post-kolonialen Medienkulturen (von 1857 bis zur Gegenwart)
  19. Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism
  20. Erik Redling, “Speaking of Dialect”: Translating Charles W. Chesnutt's Conjure Tales into Postmodern Systems of Signification
  21. English Studies Today: Recent Developments and New Directions, ed. Ansgar Nünning & Jürgen Schlaeger
  22. Eingegangene Schriften
https://doi.org/10.1515/angl.2009.004

Articles in the same Issue

  1. A Demilitarized Saint: Ælfric's Life of St. Sebastian
  2. Ireland, Literature, and Truth: Heideggerian Themes in “The Dead”
  3. ‘Doing’ Things with Words. Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy und die Praxis des narrativen Sprechaktes
  4. ‘Les Plus Rudes Chocs de la Fortune’: Willem Frederik, Stadholder of Friesland (1613 – 1664), Thomas Killigrew (1612 – 1683) and Patronage in Exile
  5. The Earliest Occurrence of Old English gerīm and Its Anglo-Irish Computistical Context
  6. Altenglisch scepen in Cædmons Hymnus (M)
  7. Corpus Linguistics 25 Years On, ed. Roberta Facchinetti
  8. Bells Chiming from the Past: Cultural and Linguistic Studies on Early English, ed. Isabel Moskowich - Spiegel & Begoña Crespo - García
  9. Cædmon's Hymn and Material Culture in the World of Bede. Six Essays, ed. Allen J. Frantzen & John Hines
  10. The Apocrypha, ed. Frederick M. Biggs
  11. The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, ed. Aaron J Kleist
  12. The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, gen. ed. Peter Hoare. Vol. I: To 1640, ed. Elisabeth Leedham - Green & Teresa Webber; Vol. II: 1640–1850, ed. Giles Mandelbrote & K. A. Manley; Vol. III: 1850–2000, ed. Alistair Black & Peter Hoare
  13. The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Vol. II: 1100–1400, ed. Nigel Morgan & Rodney M. Thomson
  14. Frances McCormack, Chaucer and the Culture of Dissent: The Lollard Context and Subtext of the Parson's Tale
  15. Marleen Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse: A Study of London, British Library, MS Additional 37790
  16. Sex, Aging, & Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52, Its Texts, Language, and Scribe, ed. M. Teresa Tavormina
  17. Barbara Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque. Dance, Costume and Music
  18. Astrid Erll, Prämediation – Remediation: Repräsentationen des indischen Aufstandes in imperialen und post-kolonialen Medienkulturen (von 1857 bis zur Gegenwart)
  19. Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism
  20. Erik Redling, “Speaking of Dialect”: Translating Charles W. Chesnutt's Conjure Tales into Postmodern Systems of Signification
  21. English Studies Today: Recent Developments and New Directions, ed. Ansgar Nünning & Jürgen Schlaeger
  22. Eingegangene Schriften
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