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Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy": A Casebook, ed. Thomas Keymer. Oxford: Oxford, 2006. Pp. ? + 264. $40.
Every decade a collection of essays on Steme captures a small galaxy of new approaches: ten years ago it was New's Critical Essays on Laurence Sterne (1998), which followed Valerie Grosvenor Myer's Riddles and Mysteries (1986). Now it is Mr. Keymer's Casebook, a formidable lineup of reprinted essays (all of which have been previously reviewed in the Scriblerian).
Continuing Donald R. Wehrs's discussion of the context of Renaissance skepticism, J. T. Parnell's "Swift, Steme, and the Skeptical Tradition" cements Sterne's connection with the Scriblerians (particularly Swift) and stresses the satirical (as opposed to novelistic) core of Tristram. Mr. Keymer's "Steme and the 'New Species of Writing' " delves into the opportunities for critical response enabled through serial publication. In "Laurence...