Sterne's Tristram Shandy as the 18th Century anti-novel and as a forerunner of the postmodern novel

Lawrence Sterne, 1713-1768
 *  The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a Gentleman, 
 * Breaks all the rules of a novel. Punctuation and language, heavily based on the philosophy that we are not in control of our thoughts.
 * Very interesting form – some chapters are in wrong order. Nonsense, some things written in Latin etc. is very unlike any life or opinions of any gentleman of this time. Entertaining but difficult
 * It is regarded as the progenitor of the 20th century stream of consciousness novel. An inspiration for modern authors Joyce, Wonegut . People could understand it, it’s not that intellectual. He wrote for everybody
 * The novel doesn’t start with Shandy’s birth but with his conception which almost didn’t happen because his mother asked just at that moment whether his father had wound up the clock
 * Sterne had written 4 books before his main character could be born and come to the world. These books are full of extravagances. Freely associated images, typographic exceptions, comic and even obscene stories which make together humorous novel very far away from any other comic novel
 * Later novels such as Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake had the same features, in expressionist drama, absurd humor
 * Characters are characterized as usual at that time, showed in kind and nice way. It is a strange mixture.
 * It is a great experiment with time and narrative technique. It pretends to be an attempt at an autobiography. It gives very little of his life and none of his opinions though.

>>> then quite a long gap >>> beginning of 19th century