The main U.S. Cold War strategy was to turn China against the USSR. Every Russian-made SAM transferred to North Vietnam through China added incrementally to the seriousness of the Sino-Soviet rift. In 1965, the USSR sent North Vietnam 80 million dollars-worth of SAMs and launchers, or about 60% of the $142,000,000 million in Soviet military aid. On 16 February 1966, it was reported that North Vietnam had a total of 84 SAM sites, which was an increase of 21 sites during recent weeks. But this report concluded: “In terms of actual threat, the expansion of prepared firing positions does not increase DRV capabilities to deter US air operations.” A later estimate put it closer to 130 SAM sites. Coincidentally, American bomber runs sought to soak up the maximum number of SAMs, since having to import new ones through China dramatically increased Sino-Soviet tensions.

The surface-to-air missiles provided by the USSR posed a huge threat to American planes. But as of 17 August 1966, only 26 planes had been shot down by SAMs, as compared to 272 brought down by AA fire: “Surface-to-Air missile defenses have played a significant role in inflicting losses, not by direct effects, but by forcing attack aircraft down into the range of anti-aircraft guns.” Still, the 384 lost aircraft out of 100,784 sorties equalled only 0.3%, “which has been somewhat less than predicted.” A secret American goal was to increase dramatically the number of SAMs the USSR shipped to North Vietnam through China. While only 200 SAMs were provided in 1965, and 1,100 in 1966, in just the first six months of 1967 alone an estimated 1,750 SAMs were sent to North Vietnam, valued at $52 million, one of the single largest components of the $220 million in Soviet aid. A major U.S. goal was to put additional pressure on this supply line. As Walt Rostow told LBJ on 11 February 1967, “the trouble in China may affect supplies to Hanoi,” which makes it “clear the Chinese are trying to force a break in relations with Moscow” (see Map 8).

We have discovered in Chapters 1 through 5 that in drawing his Shandean characters, Sterne's revision of dullness fuses benevolent intentions with self-defeating actions. We have found, too, that this paradoxical blend of self-sacrifice and self-inflation draws us within the Shandean world to admire their generosity and to laugh at their ineptness. Within the ambiguity of that world, we have also learned that while the benevolence of Yorick seems nearly unachievable, the life of utter dullness seems nearly unforgivable. Not surprisingly, as Mary-Celine Newbauld has thoroughly documented, such keen Sternean insights to the ambiguity of the human condition profoundly influenced other creative works in eighteenth-century Britain, including sentimental travel narratives, theater, and graphic arts.

The International Inf luence of Tristram Shandy and Sterne's International Inf luencers

In reading responses to Sterne's Tristram Shandy beyond England, we learn that Sterne's revision of dullness has been the primary cause of his work's popularity and influence. Lodwick Hartley writes, for instance, that Tristram Shandy enjoyed popularity with eighteenth-century American statesmen. While Thomas Jefferson admired Sterne's moral “emphasis on inward motive and intention,” Aaron Burr, thinking of forgivable, well-intended Shandean dullness, admitted that “if I had read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known that the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me.” After outlining the many inept, eighteenth-century American imitations of Sterne's sentiment Hartley explains that twentieth-century Americans have appreciated Sterne for his Joycean treatment of “human isolation in a world where everybody is victimized by the limitations of language and by his own peculiar ‘association of ideas’ “ (Hartley 1971, 167). Yet American readers still value Sterne, says Hartley, as a “prophet of men of good will” (Hartley 1971, 168).

Sterne's revision of dullness has also strongly influenced non-English-speaking writers and readers. As A. O. Aldridge explains, Brazil's Machado de Assis reveals a “peevish pessimism” over worldly dullness that makes his tone more sardonic than Sterne’s. But Aldridge also notes that Machado de Assis revealed Sterne's influence by using the digressive technique to involve readers in the creative process of exposing hobbyhorsical dullness (Aldridge 1971, 170–75).

The NWC Historical Archives also show that, in 1911, Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote to R. P. Rodgers, president, U.S. Naval War College, to explain that if Japan occupied and fortified a large number of Pacific islands, then it would be “tied to supporting them” and “It might even be urged as a sound policy on the part of Blue [U.S.], to induce Orange [Japan] to such distant effort, which would place it in the same position the Blue finds so difficult in trans-Pacific operations.” Mahan's idea had much in common with the Asian game of “Wei-ch’i” in China, or “Go” in Japan, which unlike Western games like Chess sought to take strategic territory so as to surround the enemy's bases, not to destroy them directly by a frontal assault but to render them ineffective. Coincidentally, during World War II many Japanese bases on various Pacific Islands were not attacked, but were hopped over, surrounded and over time “withered on the vine.”

Mahan also proposed the concept of “island hopping.” On 4 March 1911, Mahan told Rodgers: “In short, I believe Blue can recover a base, and gradually recover all captured positions [from Orange] in such order as may seem expedient. Some [Japanese island bases] may be even neglected, as immaterial, in favor of offensive action against the enemy's positions” (see Picture 1).

In a 22 February 1911 letter, Mahan made this strategy of skipping over certain Japanese bases even more clear when he discussed holding a certain island base as “a stepping stone to a base in or near the Orange territory, from which the superior Blue fleet can operate offensively as may be judged most expedient.” Mahan's top choice for this Blue base was the island of Okinawa: “An anchorage in the LuChus [Okinawa] is the most effective position for the Blue Fleet.” Further, if Guam was skipped on the way to Okinawa, this would not matter much, since by taking Okinawa all communications to the south would be crippled and so this “would probably cause the recall of [ Japanese] cruisers based on Guam […].”

Those who enjoy humor ranging from the sentimental to the ridiculous have long embraced Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, for such readers attest, as do Anne Bandry-Scubbi and Peter de Voogd (2013), that Sterne keeps his promise to arouse laughter that will help them to “fence against” ineluctable pain. As Madeleine Descargues- Grant and many other scholars attest, among the most memorable sources of laughter in Sterne's work stands Tristram's father Walter, the bungling philosopher of systems who stumbles in unbuttoned trousers to his son's christening, hoping to secure the infant's future with “Trismegistus,” a name, Walter asserts, that will guarantee the boy's greatness (4: 384; 1: 57). Equally entertaining, Tristram's Uncle Toby, the gentle ex-captain of artillery, plays boldly at war games but trembles in innocence before seductive Widow Wadman and tenderly refrains from hurting a bothersome fly (6: 556; 8: 715; 3:191). Most readers will also admit to chuckling heartily over Tristram's bawdy at the expense of an oversexed abbess (7: 606), and over Parson Yorick's hot-chestnut prank at the expense of the pompous old fornicator Phutatorius (4: 378); and such readers may laugh all the more freely with license granted by both Tristram and Sterne (1: Dedication to Pitt, 9; 8: 716).

Yet, as Richard A. Lanham explains, critics have long debated the meaning of Sterne's humor. In the ludicrous but short-lived clashes between the Shandys, all described in the following chapters, many mid-twentieth-century scholars see moral instruction, a reflection of the need for reasonable heads to join generous hearts in Christian living, an expression of faith in humanity's capacity for goodness in response to pain. Some critics from the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries have echoed these moral themes. For instance, J. T. Parnell finds in Sterne's humor a commitment to Anglican values and an expression of “fideistic skepticism” in response to philosophical systems woven from pride, and Ryan Stark speaks of Sterne advancing “the Christian faith” in a “decidedly odd way” by exposing “gloomy religionists everywhere.”

Death, says Alvin Kernan, always emerges as the great symbol of tragedy. Isolation, therefore, as Northrop Frye explains, becomes the primary theme of the “tragic mode” in which the hero's exclusion from humanity often ends in exclusion from life. Though it seems at first strange to speak of tragedy in a satiric work devoted to laughter, the “underlying tonality” of Tristram Shandy modulates with tragic action, for the benevolent dullness of Sterne's comic heroes ends in either isolation or death.

Before progressing with his own life and opinions, Tristram relates the story of Yorick's death, which ends with the symbolic black page. I will therefore begin this chapter with a brief return to the tragic “fatality” that “attends the actions” of Yorick in his campaign against grave dullness (1: 24), focusing this time on Eugenius, who functions, to use Frye's terminology, as the “outspoken critic of the tragic action” and the witness of Yorick's cathartic death (Frye 1957, 218). Agreeing with Eugenius rather than with Helene Moglen, who finds Yorick an innocent victim of a dull community, I will show that Yorick, like most tragic protagonists in Frye's “high mimetic” mode, makes choices that cause his fate.

Eugenius’ Tragic Friend

We have already seen the type of Tristram's isolation in the penalty Yorick pays for his jesting campaign against dullness. We have also heard the warning of Yorick's friend Eugenius that the “fools” and “knaves” rebuked by Yorick's “sport” will challenge the parson with “war” (1: 32). As the “faithful friend,” whom Frye describes as “refusing, or at any rate resisting” that tragic hero's “movement toward catastrophe” (Frye 1957, 218), generous Eugenius spells out for the incorrigible parson-jester the “consequences” of such warfare with worldly dullness (1: 29). First, Yorick will suffer his “faith questioned,” his “works belied,” his “wit forgotten,” and his “learning trampled on” by the “malice” of “hired ruffians” (1: 32). Finally, in the “last scene” of his “tragedy,” the “helpless” parson will be “sacrificed” on the “fire” fueled by his jests in order to appease those who have felt the sting of his corrective wit (1:32).

One of the major events that historians use to date the beginning of the U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam is the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, signed on 10 August 1964. This resolution was proposed by President Johnson on 5 August 1964 after two North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. Navy ships, one on 2 August 1964 and the other two days later on 4 August 1964 (see Map 7). While the first encounter was well-documented, the North Vietnamese denied the second attack ever took place. In 2005, a National Security Agency study from the time was declassified that cast doubt on the second attack. But, coincidentally, several declassified documents held at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, now appear to show that the second attack really did happen.

American participation in the Vietnam War began in early August 1964, when the Congress approved a Southeast Asia Resolution by a vote of 88 to 2 in the Senate and 416 to 0 in the House of Representatives. On 10 August 1964, President Johnson signed into law the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. By this action, Congress “approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” Critics of this resolution have since argued that while the first attack on 2 August 1964 was undoubtedly valid, the second attack on 4 August was not, which makes the resolution's wording suspect: “Whereas naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the principles of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters […]”

The first attack occurred on 2 August 1964 when three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox. This U.S. Navy destroyer was cruising in the Gulf of Tonkin in waters claimed by North Vietnam as within its 12-mile line of control, a claim not recognized by the U.S. government at the time which only recognized 3 nautical miles. After returning fire and expending six torpedoes of its own, all misses, Maddox left the engagement undamaged.

I have argued in Chapters 1 through 5 that Sterne has consciously revised the traditional action of dullness in Tristram Shandy, that he has created benevolent Shandean characters who frustrate their good intentions with prideful, selfdefeating actions. Forwarding this same argument, Ronald Paulson asserts that Sterne also “modified the satiric process” in writing A Sentimental Journey. Though Yorick functions as a satirist in Tristram Shandy, writes Paulson, in A Sentimental Journey, the traveling parson becomes “both satiric object and observer” (264). To put Paulson's comment in the terminology used above, in A Sentimental Journey, Yorick displays, just like his friends in Tristram Shandy, benevolent dullness. Not surprisingly, in a close reading of Sterne's Continuation of Bramine's Journal, we find this same display of Shandean dullness found in A Sentimental Journey in Sterne's nonfiction account of Yorick-Sterne's passion for Eliza Draper and his anguish in England as she makes her own sentimental journey to India.

A Sentimental Journey

Yorick begins his journey basking in the warmth of his benevolent urge to share his prosperity, but his prejudice toward mendicants quickly exposes his self-righteous dullness. Sounding more like Tristram, who blames all his problems on fortune (1: 8), Yorick claims that he was “predetermined” to put his purse away when the “mild, pale” monk approaches, as the hard-working clergyman, now idle, cannot abide those who get through life in “sloth and ignorance, for the love of God.” Though Yorick later grants charity, in the form of a snuff box, to the monk (1: 26), his sudden, generous reversal, as John Stedmond points out, results from his desire to impress the melancholy beauty he has met. Yet the legitimate warmth of Yorick's heart radiates first from the guilt he suffers for his cruelty to the monk, guilt he feels before he meets the woman (1: 11); later, Yorick will cry over the monk's grave with only the reader there to note his feelings (1: 27).

Yorick's Sentimentality

Yorick's tears, however, do not always flow from deep feeling, as Stedmond argues in discussing the famous caged-starling scenes. Though Yorick sighs apostrophes to the abstraction “Liberty” and laments the “miseries of confinement” suffered in the bird cage and in the Bastille (2: 96, 97), the dull parson, observes Stedmond, forgets to release the bird in his anxiety over his own need for a passport to preserve his freedom (Stedmond 1967, 155; 2: 92).

Growing Up in a Cavarzeran Community in Montréal

Licia Canton is another representative of the Italian-Canadian literary movement. Her story retraces the steps followed by Gianna Patriarca and Dôre Michelut, and it echoes the stories of many other Italian-Canadian migrants. She was born in Cavarzere, a small town in the province of Venice. In 1967, when she was four years old, she moved to Montréal with her family. Being forced to leave her native land and start a new life in a new territory was a painful and distressing experience, which has thenceforth marked her personal and professional lives. In the essay ‘Writing Canadian Narratives with Italian Accents: The Pink House and Other Stories’, she writes that, while she used to be a talkative child in Italy, in Canada she became shy and did not speak much (2019, 60). The experience of being voiceless, which is common among Italian-Canadian authors, especially female ones, triggered her need and desire to retrieve her voice, which subsequently inclined her to write. Indeed, in the same essay, she declares that she was able to find her voice only when she began writing (2019, 60).

Canton shows a great interest in migration and minority literature, with a sharp focus on Italian-Canadian literature. She has explored this theme in both critical and creative writing. Among the critical texts are Writing Our Way Home (2013), Conspicuous Accents (2014), Writing Cultural Difference (2015), and Writing Beyond History: an Antholog y of Prose and Poetry (2006). These anthologies collect the literary creations (both prose and poetry) of several Italian- Canadian authors. Among the literary texts that investigate migration from a less academic perspective is Almond Wine and Fertility (2008), where the author portrays the encounter between Italian and Canadian culture, and The Pink House and Other Stories, a collection of 15 short stories.

Among her many achievements, Canton was the recipient of the Premio Italia nel Mondo, that celebrates Italian excellence in the world. This award started in New York in 1994, when the famous Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti was awarded.

On the fourteenth of April A__ D__ Lady St Clair and her interesting protégé reached London for the express purpose of producing Alixe, according to the absurd practice of the world. Mlle de Fleury was just eighteen, very beautiful on a very small scale, with a slight and almost childish figure and a face whose sparkling and varied expression struck all who saw her with admiration. Lady St Clair had proposed taking a house while in town. But she was induced to relinquish the plan by the pressing invitation of an old aunt, who had lost sight of her since her marriage and who having no children of her own, and being very fond of young people, thought it would be an agreeable society to have her niece and grandniece staying with her during a London Season. Lady Townley, widow of Sir Joshua Townley, Rear Admiral of the Red, was sitting in a magnificent drawing room in a superb house in Park Lane, when the expected visitors were announced. The dignified hostess took off a pair of gold spectacles and laid them down on the book she was reading, rose slowly and stately and walked forward (with a large green fan closed in one hand and a worked handkerchief in the other), with a step like a queen receiving her ambassadors, to her niece.

“Welcome my dear Lady St Clair, welcome to my house and home with your daughter. And double would your welcome be if Sir Joshua, poor man, was alive. He was a good friend to your father and a good husband and a good man, but we’ll not think of that just now. Won't you be seated?”

The invitation was complied with and Alixe, to whom the old Lady's attention was by no means directed, sat motionless, gazing at her with surprise. Accustomed to the simple appearance and subdued manner of her adopted mother and having always looked on her as a model of female excellence, the present object of her thoughts appeared to some disadvantage. Highly rouged and dressed, according to poor Alixe's taste, somewhat too young with false curls of the lightest flaxen, she sate [sic] upright, majestic and pompous, talking oratorically to her niece, who fatigued and exhausted, sate patiently waiting till some pause should allow her to request permission to retire and take off her hat and cloak.

Identity and Migration

In her book Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition, Yasemin Yildiz introduces the notion of the monolingual paradigm (2012, 2).1 This paradigm establishes that people possess one language only: their mother tongue. The relationship with the mother tongue is believed to set the boundaries defining who we are. It links us to a well-defined and exclusive ethnicity and culture, affecting the way we operate and function within a specific community (2012, 2). This paradigm does not exist in nature; rather, it is a sociopolitical construct that emerged in the eighteenth century, and which reminds us that this world ‘is not one but is ruled as one’ (Ponzanesi and Merolla 2005, 6). As a matter of fact, the monolingual paradigm serves the purpose of organising our world, defining individuals and communities on both a personal and a collective level (Yildiz 2012, 2). Despite the attempts at imposing this paradigm on individuals and society, Yildiz claims that multilingual practices nonetheless continued to exist and survive. She defines them as postmonolingual, a term which describes their ‘struggle against the monolingual paradigm’ (Yildiz 2012, 4).

As mentioned in the Introduction, this struggle has become particularly evident in contemporary societies, where people are constantly on the move, crossing and inhabiting multiple linguistic, physical and cultural spaces. Their movements trigger a rethinking of the relation between individuals, place and language. Indeed, ‘traditional representations based on the supposed unity of people, culture and territory do not hold’ (Wilson 2020, 214). The alleged unity of people and language is also challenged. Constituting a movement to a different linguistic environment, migration breaks the constitutive relation between language and identity. It disrupts the grounding of the self in the mother tongue, forcing migrants to renegotiate and redefine their selfhood and rethink taken-for-granted concepts, such as home and belonging. For this reason, migrants have often been defined as ‘translated beings’ (Cronin 2006, Polezzi 2012). In order to function within the new community, the way they perceive and relate to reality has to be redefined and transferred from one linguistic and cultural dimension to another:

Once it became clear that Sino-Soviet tensions had reached new heights, on 31 October 1968 President Johnson ordered that all air, naval and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam would end as of 1 November 1968. His stated goal was to open talks leading to a negotiated peace settlement, but arguably Johnson's real goal was to turn China and the USSR against each other even more. This plan worked. On 2 March 1969, conflict erupted along China's northern border with Russia. For a time, it even appeared this war might spread and perhaps even go nuclear. Although this did not happen, the Sino-Soviet war opened the door for the next American president, Richard M. Nixon, to begin the long process of opening diplomatic relations with China and turning the PRC against the USSR. Coincidentally, the U.S. Navy's Top Gun School also opened on 3 March 1969, just one day after the Sino-Soviet war erupted, since the previous goal of soaking up SAMs was no longer required.

In December 1966, the CIA reported Hanoi thought “the Vietnam war was a test case as to whether world communism would succeed or not.” President Johnson's strategy of tearing apart the Sino-Soviet alliance by focus ing on Soviet aid to North Vietnam worked perfectly, since all such aid had to transit through Chinese territory. Soaking up the maximum number of SAMs was critical for this plan to succeed. By February 1967, the CIA could report: “The internal turmoil in China with its anti-Soviet theme has greatly reduced the amount of Soviet aid reaching North Vietnam. The Soviets have tried to bypass the problem by transporting the material by air but lack suf ficient long-range planes to accomplish the task.”

As early as spring 1965, it became clear to the CIA that the way to play the USSR and China off each other was the delivery of military aid to North Vietnam. The U.S. bombing campaign sought to increase Soviet-Soviet tensions. The USSR soon began to feel trapped. Frustrated, during March 1965 one Soviet official even warned “that Communist China would be the only winner in the event of a miscalculation by either the US or the Soviet Union” (see Document 8).

It was in the dreamy twilight of an autumn evening, about a fortnight after the arrival [of] Everard and his sister at Lord Felix's seat, that Alixe, accompanied by her friend Emily, stepped lightly and hurriedly along a superb gallery which joined the library.

“Oh wait, Emily, wait one moment. I never, never shall have firmness enough to go through the scene I am preparing for myself.” And so saying, Alixe sunk on a low cushioned seat in the embrasure of an old fashioned gothic window and burst into tears.

“My dear Alixe, you agitate yourself needlessly,” said her friend, soothingly. “Have we not both agreed that it must be done, and the sooner the better. A little courage now and you will spare yourself and one whom, I am persuaded, is dearer than self, much future misery. Go dearest, and may the God of the fatherless be with you.”

Alixe accordingly rose and advanced to the library door. What would she have given to have doubted his presence in that dreaded apartment? But no, she knew he was there, she knew he was alone. She stole thro’ the end of the dim gallery and, trembling like a guilty thing, paused before the door. She listened. All was so still that she fancied the beating of her heart might be heard in the distance. At length, summoning all her strength and calling rapidly to mind the different arguments for the step she was taking, which but last night appeared so incontrovertible, she turned the lock and entered the room. Everard was at the other end of it. He turned, on hearing the door open, and Alixe felt there was no longer any chance of retreat.

“Ha, my pretty Alixe, I almost took you for a spirit. You came in so softly I had thought you, with all the rest of your gay companions, were at the archery meeting. However, it is a lucky accident that brings you, for I was growing quite melancholy.”

“Everard,” said Alixe, while the big tears stood in her eyes. “I knew you were not going to the archery meeting and I came here to – to speak with you. It is not accident that has brought me and I would beg of you to hear me patiently for a little, a very little while.”

The present book has explored the connection between migrating, writing and self-translating within transmigratory contexts, specifically investigating how transmigrant authors use language to negotiate and reframe their identity against the backdrop of the monolingual paradigm. Starting from the premise that writing and translating are not only linguistic and cultural processes but also self-reflexive practices, they have been examined in conjunction with a process of redefinition of the self.

To this end, I selected a corpus of four transmigrant authors of Italian origins, who moved to English-speaking countries. The aim was to work with a language pair, that to date, has been mainly neglected. Indeed, while the relation between English and Italian in writing and translating has been investigated in several articles, so far it has not been the focus of any specific volume. The decision to work with Italian and English was not only connected to a personal interest (as I am an Italian speaker who lives and works in the UK). The focus on Italian and English also allowed me to investigate the subversive power of the former and the role played by multilingual practices in reshaping the borders and dynamics between dominant and dominated languages. By juxtaposing Italian and English on the page, or writing in both, the authors in this volume rewrite the borders between linguistic systems, challenging the norms that dictate language dynamics and redefining whether and how languages assert themselves within the context of globalisation.

The choice to focus on Italian was also connected to its specific connotation with respect to the monolingual paradigm. Like mentioned in Chapter 1, the concept of a mother tongue acquires an interesting value within the Italian context, where dialects, standard and regional Italian coexist. Given this connotation, the Italian language perfectly allows an examination of multilingual practices as postmonolingual, a point that has been put forward in this volume. The writing and self-translating performances of the authors can be considered postomonolingual, ‘as they survive, exist and emerge’, against the monolingual paradigm. Indeed, all the writers in this corpus were never fully included in the monolingual paradigm, yet they conceived of themselves as monolinguals and attempted to establish relations with a unique mother tongue.

Lady Townley embraced the first opportunity of giving a ball in honour, as she said, of Alixe's arrival, though the latter was rather surprised that she should think of gaieties when her favourites the Aimwells were in such distress. She had to learn that in the world, friendship is little more than a name; and that the same people who flatter and caress you one night, would if you were dead, reconsider the accident at the next ball, in the same breath, with a description of the week's amusements, and chassée [sic] forward with the utmost composure after they had finished. Alixe was reflecting painfully on this circumstance and wondering why all Pamela's professed friends danced so gaily, and seemed so merry, when she saw Everard standing in the middle of the room. He did not see her for a minute or two. He was talking eagerly and laughingly to someone she could not see. Charles St Clair, who was standing close by Alixe and had just begged her to dance the first dance with him, as he knew no one, saw her raised colour and open eye and an instinctive feeling told him that Everard, the dreaded Everard, was in the room with him, probably within a few yards of the place where he was standing.

In a moment after, that interesting individual came forward and greeted Alixe with great eagerness. He asked her to dance and offered his arm as if he knew there could be no refusal.

“Alixe, you are engaged to dance with me,” said Charles in a tone he intended should be playful. Everard started and fixed his eyes on the speaker and then turned to Alixe.

“I beg your pardon Charles. Mr Price, my brother, Charles.” Everard extended his hand with some slight compliment. Charles St Clair took it, and if his pulse was quick and his hand feverishly hot, Mr Price could not tell that a few moments before, those symptoms were not visible.

“Well,” said Everard, smiling, “I aim to resign you to Mr St Clair.” Charles, who was “himself again,” begged he could not consider it an engagement, adding that he believed it was not the fashion for brothers to make partners and that perhaps Alixe would give him some other dance in the course of the evening.

In a letter written in 1767, one year before his death, Laurence Sterne describes himself as a “sentimental being” but assures his anonymous aristocratic friend that he counts himself as no ineffectual, scatter-brained Shandy. “The world has imagined,” Sterne explains to the earl, that “because I wrote Tristram Shandy I was myself more Shandean than I really was.”

We must acknowledge Sterne's disclaimer here when we contrast his sales to those of Tristram, who laments the “ten cart loads” of unsold volumes (8: 663) and receives no recognition in Paris (7: 599). In contrast to such failure and anonymity, in a 1762 letter to the famous actor David Garrick, Sterne writes of the “unexpected honours” he received in France, boasting that he has, unlike Tristram, converted many French readers “unto Shandeism” (Letter 81: 224; Letter 84: 242). Indeed, in his 1765 letter to Robert Foley, Sterne admits receiving, unlike Tristram, a “considerable sum” from sales of Tristram Shandy (Letter 147: 409), and Sterne's letter to Thomas Becket in the same year describes gratifying sales (Letter 89: 261).

Yet despite this contrast between the author's success and the surrogate's failure as well as Sterne's denial of Shandean kinship, Sterne shares Tristram's authorial experiences and motives. We have already seen in Tristram Shandy itself that Sterne and Tristram have accepted the inevitable persecution that comes to wit and the inevitable death that comes to humanity, and that, their tragic resignation notwithstanding, both authors have committed themselves to writing for friendship and against dullness. Sterne's letters reflect this same Shandean resignation and commitment.

Sterne's Epistolary Rebukes of Moralistic Dullness

Even though Tristram Shandy became immediately fashionable, Sterne, like Tristram, received numerous rebukes from the “grave” moralists. In a 1760 letter to Garrick, Sterne speaks of the “wound” he received from the rumor that he intended to lampoon William Warburton as Tristram's tutor. Such a report, says Sterne, mirrors the kind of “malice” that “brought poor Yorick to his grave” (Letter 46: 123). In that same year, Sterne confesses in a post-script to a letter addressed to Warburton that “the scribblers’ use me ill” (Letter 59: 152); Sterne was also accused of slandering Dr. Mead in his portrait of the pompous Dr. Kunastrokius (Letter 45: 125). Reiterating