Another popular contemporary description of sensations came from a “Man of Feeling”2 the author of two internationally acclaimed novels. The author, Laurence Sterne (1713-68), was originally a clergyman who began to write in the last decade of his life. His first novel, which was not received as favourably in England as it was on the continent, is today regarded as one of the most intriguing and funniest novels written in the eighteenth century. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759-67) defies all novelistic categories. It cannot be called a novel of development, or a novel of sentiment, or a novel of adventure. It is, however, considered to be a surprising example of a postmodernist novel written in the eighteenth century. Sterne seems to defy classicist principles of order and structure and puts to test Locke’s tenets on the association of ideas and the importance of reflection and sensations in acquiring knowledge. Tristram Shandy is unlike other fictitious biographies; it does not have a distinct plot—the first person narrator is born only in the fourth volume of the book only to disappear from it for a long while and then reappear in a digressive account of travels made through France on the last pages. Readers find out almost nothing about the title character’s life, not to mention his opinions. Thus the structure of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy is fragmented and yet diffuse, anecdotal and digressive rather than focused, looking more like an early version of the twentieth-century stream of consciousness novel. The narrative tone is conversational and humorous. The main characters are Tristram’s father, Walter Shandy, Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim (Uncle Toby’s servant), Tristram’s mother and Parson Yorick. The interrupted scenes, unfinished sentences set off by excessive use of dashes and semi colons, occasional asterisks and blank pages reflect the narrator’s uncontrolled flow of consciousness and conversation, drawing the reader’s attention to the self-reflexivity of the text, that is, to the process of writing. Tristram often describes sentimental incidents and scenes, but his sensibility, complemented with humour and self-mocking irony, makes the reader aware of the ambiguity of the situations related. In Sterne’s next work, A Sentimental Journey, Parson Yorick from Tristram Shandy becomes the narrator.