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The Thematic Relationship Of Laurence Sterne To David Herbert Lawrence, Frederick Thornett Hardy

Master's Theses

Among the pioneer novelists of the eighteenth century, Laurence Sterne stands out as an unexplained curiosity. In many ways the most modern of the early novelists, he is regarded as the first stream-of-consciousness author, and thus the forerunner of the most significant school in today's fiction. Sterne constructed his original style from ideas derived from the seventeenth century philosopher, John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. A less obvious but equally defendable fact is that this philosophical work provided Sterne with a thematic as well as stylistic bridge into the twentieth century. The clearest illustration of this relationship is …