Sottises and Narration: The Shandeism of Thinking; or, the Poetic Contestation of ThoughtdissertationsHarris, Justin WilliamcreatorMendicino, KristinaAdvisorRichter, GerhardReaderSchestag, ThomasReaderBrown University. Department of German Studiessponsor2025v, 186 p.born digitalThesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2025thesesThis dissertation explores Édouard Glissant’s “Poetics of Relation” and Heidegger’s notion of one’s dwelling poetically to prompt a study of the extent to which these understandings concerning the poetic find functional ground in other textual traditions. It locates one such tradition within the reception of Shandeism in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European literature. In Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne presents a poetic model of thinking in the text’s narrative form, through which its thoughts and expressions take on meaning through the way they are variously articulated, reformulated, repeated, and, above all, contested. This contestation takes place both explicitly, through the dialogues shared among Sterne’s speakers, and implicitly, through the tensions that are carried between Sterne’s use of citations and his figures’ commentaries upon those citations. This dissertation then traces how this poetic model of thinking undergoes further variation and contestation through the appropriation of Shandeism by Diderot, Goethe, and Nietzsche. It will demonstrate thereby that it is not only Sterne’s novel alone, but a constellation of texts and readings by Sterne, Diderot, Goethe, and Nietzsche that offers the best exposition of this poetic model of thinking.PoeticsPhilosophy in literatureMeaning (Philosophy)Language and languagesGerman poetryThought and thinkingReadingLiterary translationNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900Diderot, Denis, 1713-1784Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976Narration (Rhetoric)SotiesLife and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman (Sterne, Laurence)Jacques le fataliste et son maître (Diderot, Denis)Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von)Also sprach Zarathustra (Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm)Menschliches, allzumenschliches (Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm)Sterne, Laurence, 1713-1768Glissant, Édouard, 1928-2011 (Glissant, Édouard, 1928-)Republic of Letters (Society)Fröhliche Wissenschaft (Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm)EnglishRPB20250707