A Rabelaisian Fragment

"A Rabelaisian Fragment", also known as the "Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais" is an unfinished satirical work by Laurence Sterne. It was most likely composed in 1759, in between his minor pamphlet A Political Romance and his highly popular Tristram Shandy, and represents his first attempt at long-form comic fiction. Its two chapters depict a debate among clergymen in vulgar language, and another clergyman who panics while plagiarizing a sermon. A bowdlerized version of the fragment was published posthumously by Sterne's daughter Lydia in 1775; this was the only version to be reprinted until 1972, when the scholar Melvyn New published an edited critical edition based on the original manuscript.

Longinus Rabelaicus (Sterne's invention) proposes creating a comprehensive manual called the Kerukopaedia^[a] that would compile all the rules for writing sermons into one systematic guide. His companions Panurge, Epistemon, Gymnast, and Triboulet (all characters from Rabelais) interrupt with objections, jokes, and debate about whether this should be a guide for writing sermons or preaching them.

The clergyman Homenas (also from Rabelais) is in the next room plagiarizing his Sunday sermon from Dr. Samuel Clarke's published works. Homenas becomes anxious; he imagines himself falling from a high pulpit, defecating himself, and dying. His anxiety triggers a long crying fit, which improves his rhetoric by cooling his overheated style. Throughout Homenas's breakdown, the scholars in the adjoining room can hear everything through the walls. Panurge, who had been about to respond to Longinus Rabelaicus, remains frozen with his mouth open.

The "Fragment" is a manuscript with twenty-three leaves.^[2][b] Sterne did not give the fragment a title, but did label its two sections as "Chapt. 1st" and "Chap. 2d".^[4] The literary historian Melvyn New dates its composition to January or February of 1759, after his pamphlet A Political Romance had inspired Sterne to take up writing as a career but before he had composed much of Tristram Shandy, the novel which would soon make him famous.^[5] According to a letter by someone who discussed the piece with Sterne in the summer of 1759, it originally included an allegorical satire about competing interpretations of the biblical Book of Job, inspired by the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.^[6] However, this debate about Job is not present in the extant fragment.^[6]

The extant manuscript features substantial edits and corrections by Sterne, suggesting it was a rough draft.^[2] For example, Sterne changed his mind multiple times about the priest whom Homenas copies: in the first revision, it is John Rogers (with a double entendre on Homenas "Rogering" his sermons); Rogers is crossed out and replaced with John Norris; Norris is then replaced with Clarke.^[2] The last sentence implies that the story was intended to continue; it states, "They plainly and distinctly heard every Syllable of what you will find recorded in the very next Chapter."^[1]

A bowdlerized version of the fragment was published posthumously by Sterne's daughter Lydia in 1775.^[2] She listed it on the title page as "A Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais".^[2] This was the only version to be reprinted until 1972, when the scholar Melvyn New published an edited critical edition based on the original manuscript.^[2]

In the fragment, Sterne's primary satiric influence is Rabelais, by way of Jonathan Swift. According to the literary scholar Marcus Walsh, both Swift and Sterne "are indebted to the extravagance, the invention, and the indecency of Rabelais."^[7] Walsh calls the description of Homenas's plagiarism "inventively obscene".^[7] The fragment treats the church without solemnity, and several times uses "shit" as an expletive and a literal referent.^[8] One of Sterne's letters claims he has toned down his influences: he writes, "I deny I have gone as farr as Swift—He keeps a due distance from Rabelais—& I keep a due distance from him".^[7]

The three writers also share a digressive and episodic narrative structure, which Walsh compares to shaggy dog stories as opposed to comedies or tragedies whose plots drive toward a focused ending.^[9]

Despite Sterne's implicit critique of plagiaism in the fragment, his own writing relies heavily on literary echoes, allusions, and quotations.^[10] Some of his Rabelaisian language is specifically taken from the seventeenth century translation by Thomas Urquhart and Peter Motteux (1653–94).^[10]

Sterne's jokes at the expense of the Kerukopaedia suggest that its contents would have been a parody of Longinus's Peri Hupsous (On the Sublime), previously parodied in Alexander Pope's "Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry".^[2]

Some paragraphs from the fragment appear in Tristram Shandy with minor changes, and are crossed out in the manuscript.^[5]

• New, Melvyn (1972). "Sterne's Rabelaisian Fragment: A Text from the Holograph Manuscript". Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. 87 (5): 1083–1092. doi:10.2307/461185. JSTOR 461185.
• Walsh, Marcus (2010). "Scriblerian satire, A Political Romance, the 'Rabelaisian Fragment', and the origins of Tristram Shandy". The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne. doi:10.1017/CCOL9780521849722.003.