“By a small misguidance of the affection”: War as Love in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy

This study reads Sterne’s novel in the context of the Seven Years’ War and examines the ambivalent – and often contradictory – attitude(s) to war embodied by the novel’s eccentric characters – particularly Uncle Toby. It foregrounds a particular articulation of war as love – understood both in terms of romantic desire and fellow-feeling – that Tristram Shandy problematizes by starting from Lord Shaftesbury’s insights on the excess and misapplication of affection.