Publisher's Synopsis
The first work written by Sterne might be labelled a roman à clef or a cronique scandaleuse, which were so popular at the beginning of the eighteenth century. However, even these more suitable names do not do justice to the richness and slipperiness of this text. It can certainly be considered a mock-epic allegory that wraps in its translucent veils a provincial squabble between a church-lawyer, an archbishop and a Dean, i.e. a "Lilliputian" satire on ecclesiastical politics in Sterne s York.This, though necessary, is not sufficient to account for the multifariousness of the work. The scheme of the allegorical satire not only overlaps with the narrative scheme of the romance or history, but with the epistolary novel as well, the parody of which is but the first external frame inside which many other genres are parodied.The story of the squabble is just half the work. The other half is a "subjoined" key to the allegory and two other letters. And "subjoining" a key, which is in the end no key at all, represents, literary speaking, a "scandal" as shameful as the topical misdeeds that are told. Inexorably, the focus of the scandal shifts from the allegorical history of facts to the allegorical romance of their reading.
