Taking Liberties: Sterne, Wilkes and Warburton

Abstract

In this essay, I contend that the formation of modern literature in England is intimately related to the emergence of political radicalism, making my case by associating Laurence Sterne with modern literature and John Wilkes with modern radicalism. Both are dissidents who (to speak very generally) bring established cultural and social institutions into closer proximity with everyday life. This may be a bold and teleological argument, but at least my method is cautious. I develop my line of thought circumspectly by describing in some detail key social, political and intellectual connections and analogies between Wilkes and Sterne, particularly the libertinage and fame that they shared. Their libertinage, I argue, helped fan the flames of their celebrity in an already mediatized public sphere. But I also emphasize their common enmity of that neglected figure, William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. It may seem odd that a figure as little known as Warburton stands at the centre of a conjuncture of such historical resonance and effect. But the reason for Warburton’s neglect is that he has been overshadowed by precisely those forces that were initially energized, at least in part, by their antagonism to him and the orthodoxy that he represented.