Swiftly Sterneward

These thirteen essays have been collected to honor Melvyn New, professor emeritus (Florida), and are prefaced by a description of his scholarly career of more than forty years. Suggesting the wide range of that career, the first eight essays offer various critical perspectives on a diverse group of eighteenth-century authors. These include a reading of Eliot in the shadow of Pope; a comparison of Gainsboroughs final paintings and Sternes Sentimental Journey; a study of Johnson and casuistry; a discussion of Smolletts view of slavery in Roderick Random; a bibliographical study of a Lyttelton poem; a comparison of Swift and Nietzsche; and two essays about Fieldings Joseph Andrews. Laurence Sterne, the primary focus of Professor News scholarship, is also the focus of the final five essays, which treat Sterne in contexts as disparate as the kabbalah, abolitionist discourse, local English church politics, the use of the fragment, and, finally, the culture of modernity.