Laurence Sterne’s Sermons and The Pulpit-Fool

A long poem, “The Pulpit Fool” written by John Dunton in 1707 casts into great doubt modern readings of Laurence Sterne’s eighteenth-century sermons as uniquely sentimental, non-doctrinal, and even non-religious. The poem lists more than a hundred preachers of the seventeenth century who Dunton praises for their refusal to engage in theological hostilities from the pulpit but instead preach “to the heart.” At the beginning of the century, well before sentimentalism took hold in literature, Dunton found many preachers for whom Jesus was the man of sentiment. This chapter thus establishes the importance of Laurence Sterne and his work to the history of religion.