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Laurence Sterne and the Tradition of Christian Folly

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Laurence Sterne and the Tradition of Christian Folly LAURENCE STERNE AND THE TRADITION OF CHRISTIAN FOLLY By BYRON PETRAKIS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO TIIE GR-\DUATE COUNCIL OF THE UNI\ERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DECREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1968 Copyright by- Byron Petrakis 1968 Acknowledgments It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance which I have received from the members of my supervisory committee, Professor George M. Harper, and Professor E. Ashby Hammond. To Professor Thomas R» Preston, under whose guidance this dissertation was begun, I owe the debt of inspiration and encouragement. To Professor Aubrey L. Williams, I owe the debt of the scholarly example and patient criticism which enabled me to complete this dissertation. Finally, I thank my wife, Gayle, for loving me enough to avoid Mrs. Shandy's error of giving her "assent and consent to any proposition" which her husband "laid before her." iii Preface The subject of this study is Sterne's use of the Pauline con- cept of Christian folly: that is, that wisdom in the eyes of the world may be folly in the eyes of God, while folly in the eyes of the world may lead to wisdom in the eyes of God.. Ity thesis is that the various aspects of the concept of Christian folly which appear throughout Sterne's work reflect traditional Christian attitudes toward what this world calls wisdom and folly. Focusing particularly on in the novel Tristram Shandy , I argue that several of the characters personify various aspects of wisdom and folly, ranging from Walter Shandy's obsession with worldly-wise hypotheses to Parson Yorick's apparently "foolish" martyrdom to truth, and that the novelist- preacher Sterne accomplishes a transvaluation of the terms "wisdom" and "follyo" Because Sterne's employment of the concept of Christian folly is rooted in earlier treatments of the idea of the wise fool in Christ, Chapter I of this study traces the history of the idea of Christian folly from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century. Chapter I shows how early Fathers of the Church and medieval mystics such as Thomas a Kempis shaped the idea of Christian folly into two related, yet distinct strands. For members of what Etienne Gilson has called the "Tertullian family," Christian folly took the form of intellectual humility in order to combat the challenge of gnosticism, while for members of the "Augustine family," notably St. Iv Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa, Christian folly took the form of "learned ignorance" in order to meet the challenge of scholasticism. With the advent of the Renaissance, and the work of the great Chris- tian humanists, Erasmus and Rabelais, the idea of the wise fool in Christ leaves the confines of Biblical commentary and polemical theology, and enters the realm of imaginative literature. The wise fools in Christ, praised by the medieval Church Fathers as personi- fications of a theological idea or concept, become in the works of Erasmus and Rabelais drgmatis personae , capable of acting as court jesters, receptacles of divine truth, enemies of the proud and worldly wise, and exemplars of charity and humility. In the person of Sir Thomas More, these various facets of Christian folly combined to give to the Renaissance and the world a living example of how folly in the eyes of men leads to wisdom in the eyes of God. At the conclusion of the Renaissance and up to the eighteenth century, the idea of Christian folly was most evident in the form of Biblical commentaries and sermons upon Pauline texts by Anglican divines, such as Henry Hammond and Robert South. Chapter II shows how the idea of Christian folly which appears in Tristram Shandy is related to traditional Christian views of not only the dangers resulting from man's obsession with worldly wisdom, but also the temporal and spiritual benefits accruing from man's recognition of his own foolishness. More specifically. Chapter II attempts to demonstrate that the characters in Tristram Shandy comprise "wisdom," depending a catalogue of fools, whose "folly" is sometimes Solomon's upon the perspective of the viewer. Because Sterne views observation that "the number of fools is infinite" from the sympathe- Tristram tic point of view of Erasmian irony, he ridicules folly in Shandy instead of inveighing against it in the manner of some of his Augustan predecessors. While Sterne's narrator, Tristram, exposes the foolishness of the novel's worldly wise men, particularly his father's obsession with speculative hypotheses, he exhibits an Eras- mian perspective on hwman folly by himself speaking as a fool. Parson Yorick, Tristram's more "foolish," but paradoxically "wiser," counter- part, complements Tristram's satire upon worldly wisdom by exposing the foolishness of "vile canonists" and "polemic divines," In ridicul- ing the pretensions and shortcomings of his clerical colleagues, Yorick also reveals himself as "a man of infinite jest" and as a model of Christian humility and charity, thereby personifying several of the virtues eulogized by Renaissance praisers of folly. Chapter III shows how Toby and Trim, often dismissed as ineffectual simpletons or amusing eccentrics, illustrate the Pauline paradox that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to con- found the wise; and . - . the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty" (I Cor, 1.27), More particularly, the first section of Chapter III attempts to demonstrate that Tristram's uncle, Toby, functions as an unlearned instrument of divine wisdom and resembles the "natural" fools praised by the medieval Fathers of vi s Functioning the Church for their Christ-like simplicity and charity » as a foil to the worldly wisdom of the novel's pedants, Toby also exemplifies the Christian virtues of charity, humility, and trust in divine providence, which Sterne expresses in The Sermons of Mr. Yorick . The second section of Chapter III attempts to demonstrate that Corporal Trim, as seen particularly in his funeral oration upon Bobby's death, is Sterne's projection of the ideal preacher. Dramatizing the essence of Sterne's concept of preaching, a direct appeal to the heart. Trim rejects both the affectations of pre-Restoration pulpit eloquence and the emotionless severity of the Restoration pulpit. Speaking in the rich, but unaffected, language of the Scriptures, Trim demonstrates to the Shandeans the wisdom of what St. Paul called "the folly of preaching" (I Cor, 1.21). Chapter IV shows how Parson Yorick 's Christian folly, in both Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey , is the highest manifestation of wise folly which appears in Sterne's writings. Sterne's allusions to Hamlet and Don Quixote , throughout Volume I of Tristram Shandy , provide a context for establishing Yorick 's Christian folly as a norm to test the various kinds of worldly wisdom represented in the novel. Although Tristram praises Yorick 's quixotic martyrdom to truth in Volume I of Tristram Shandy , he also blames his "Hero" for his lack of discretion and prudence. Corresponding to his wavering, as a narrator, between praise and blame for Yorick 's Christian folly, is Tristram's failure, as a character, to achieve the perfect wisdom of Yorick' Christian folly. Chapter IV also shows how Yorick 's wise folly in Christ becomes evident in his similarity to Paul's "New Man," who vii represents the Christian fool's joyful vision of death as the beginning of life. In contrast, Tristram, like Paul's "Old Man," subverts the moral and spiritual imperative of man's journey through this world to the next by foolishly attempting to outrace Death in Volume VII of Tristram Shandy c The "Sentimental Traveller" Yorick of A Sentimental Journey concludes the program of wise folly in Christ which Sterne presents throughout his writings. Ify prefatory remarks would be incomplete without an acknowledg- ment of my indebtedness to Walter Kaiser's Praisers of Folly , which introduced me to the study of the wise fool in Christ, I am also generally indebted to John Traugott's Tristram Shandy's World , John Stedmond's The Comic Art of Laurence Sterne , and Gardner D. Stout, Jr. 's edition of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick for pointing out ways in which Sterne's use of the idea of Christian folly could be developed and discussed. viii Contents Acknowledgments iii Prefac e iv One The Tradition of Christian Folly- 1 Two The Folly of Wisdom k3 Three The Wisdom of Folly- 78 Four The Transcendent Wisdom of lorick's Christian Folly 122 Works Cited 177 ix One: The Tradition of Christian Folly In his sermon "Advantages of Christianity to the World," based upon Romans 1.22 ("Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools"), Laurence Sterne states that the wisdom of the learned Greeks and Romans was "specious" and nothing "but a more glittering kind of is ignorance." In "Our Conversation \ in Heaven," whose text Fhillipians 3.20 ("For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ"), Sterne encourages his readers to follow the example of St. Paul, who "accounted all things but loss, that is, less than nothing, for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ" (Sermons , II, 93) » These two quotations from The Sermons of Mr. Yorick illustrate a Pauline concept or idea which may be called "Christian folly." The essence of the idea of Christian folly is Paul's teaching that the truly wise man rejects this world's wisdom and becomes "a fool for Christ's sake" (I Cor. li.lO), "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (I Cor. 3.19), argues Paul, and "the foolishness of God is wiser than men" (I Cor.
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