Sterne and Shklovsky, Revisited

Abstract This chapter revisits Viktor Shklovsky’s lifelong fascination with Laurence Sterne. It begins by examining the mixed reception of Shklovsky’s pamphlet Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’ and the Theory of the Novel (1921), comparing how academic and creative circles responded to Shklovsky’s portrayal of Sterne. It then considers the Sternean dimensions of Shklovsky’s performative criticism and his literary self-fashioning. Through a comparison of Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey and Shklovsky’s Zoo, or Letters Not About Love, read alongside Shklovsky’s correspondence with Elsa Triolet, it examines the affinity between Shklovsky and Sterne in their blurring of the line between private and public selves and in their use of their books to construct biographical myths around the women they address (Elsa Triolet and Eliza Draper). It concludes by discussing early Soviet views on sternianstvo and tracing of how Shklovsky’s engagement with Sterne continued beyond the 1920s.