In the chapter “Narrative Desire” of his major work, Reading for Plot, author Peter Brooks discusses the different modes of desire that exist within a reader. He argues that these desires are the impetus forces brought to a text that actually structure the plot and carry/create the momentum of the discourse. “Desire,” he writes, “is always there at the beginning of a narrative, often in a state of initial excitement, often having reached a state of such intensity that it is necessary to create movement, take action, and initiate change” ( Brooks 38 ). Desire, therefore, initiates the narrative. But desire also devours the discourse it creates, this narrative “diminishing as it is realized, leading to an end that is the consummation… of its creation of meaning” (52). “The paradox of narrative,” then, is that narrative desire is ultimately… desire for the end” (52). In other words, one reads only to reach an inevitable conclusion. At the same time, however, one is never able to arrive at or articulate this “terminal,” as the ending contains both the meaning and destruction of the narrative (Brooks 58). The “end” is then replaced, metaphorically, by an absence that allows the narrative's driving desire to continue pushing the discourse forward. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Although Brooks centers his analysis of narrative desire primarily on the 19th-century novel, similar dynamics are at work in Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey. In this text, Yorick the “hero-traveller” (and a semi-autobiographical figure of Sterne) constantly initiates encounters to which he sees no definitive conclusion. Desire begins his journey, as he decides to travel through France to settle an argument with a friend (who asks if Yorick has ever seen France). This initial desire, this Eros, extends and expands throughout the text due to the story's reluctance to conclude, or its "replacement" of the end with various formal absences: digressions, pauses, fast forwarding of the story or overriding revelry . details (prolepsis), etc. Because the narrative refuses to name the ending that cannot be articulated, because it refuses to bring the Eros moments to fruition in the climax, it forbids the utterance/expression of the word “sex.” This repression, which Michel Foucault identifies as having begun in the 17th century, does not lead to the disappearance of the term, but rather to an incitement to discourse. The more sex isn't mentioned openly, the more it keeps reappearing in various other discourses, popping up in unexpected places. In this article, I will demonstrate how three elements of A Sentimental Journey's narrative form: its travelogue style, its use of embedded narrative, and its refusal to name or represent sex (but not to give up passion entirely) ) – are 1) all the ways in which the narrative resists reaching the end and 2) formally reflect this text's interest in foreplay, with the extension of arousal and the dissipation of Eros. In this way Sterne offers sentimentalism as an alternative to libertinism (though not as a total renunciation of it). In the latter case, sex is an immediate event limited (and deemed successful) to reaching orgasm. On the contrary, in A Sentimental Journey, libertine desire is channeled in a polymorphic way. Eros is staggered and diverted towards different types of pleasure, linked both to the personal search for titillation and to a more virtuous sense of goodwill towards humanity. One of the ways in which the form of A Sentimental Journey achieves its themes of sentimental eroticism is theenjoyment and the rechanneling of libertine desire, is reflected in the travelogue style of the narrative (a classic motif which, covering a sort of spatiality and temporality, thus constructs the narrative). A Sentimental Journey documents Yorick's travels through France, but iltravelogue is much more interested in recording the details of Yorick's meandering journey – the individual characters and unique experiences he encounters along the way – than the hard facts of a particular destination or place. A Sentimental Journey emerged from a period in the 18th century when the travel narrative genre (particularly travels from Europe) was particularly popular. The novel is actually a satire of Tobias Smollet's Travels Trough France and Italy (1766), in which Smollett's memories of his travels are so negative, so tainted with acrimony and disgust, that a reader would never be inspired or excited by them (i.e. pleased). ) from these visions coming from abroad. Smollet appears in Sterne's novel as the character Smelfungus, a man whose misery and abundance of negative feelings “discolored or distorted” his accounts of the many objects and sites he encountered on his travels (28). For Smelfungus, traveling is a solipsistic and self-centered activity. Yorick (and therefore Sterne), on the other hand, see travel as an opportunity for social and touching experiences. “What a great quantity of adventures,” says Yorick, “can be reaped in this short span of life by him who interests his heart in all things, and who, having eyes to see, what time and chance continually offer him.” as he travels on his way, he lacks nothing he can lay his hands on” (28). Yorick will vary his route, take detours, focus on the details of his surroundings, because such an indeterminate path prolongs the sentimental pleasure of the journey, giving him total access to his environment. For example, he initially plans to travel to Versailles to meet Monsieur Le Duc de C and obtain a passport. However, he never gets to see Monsieur Le Duc, deciding instead to seek out the Comte de B, a gentleman he has been told about in the course of his travels. Explaining his decision, Yorick says, “so I changed my mind a second time – Indeed, it was the third time” (76). Yorick does not arrive at the end, at his intended destination. In this way the narrative returns to itself, moving laterally and cyclically, but never along a straight path. Thus, the dynamic travelogue style offers the opportunity for Yorick to experience an exciting variety of examples of goodwill towards men and a multitude of small erotic encounters. For example, it is in his wandering and indeterminate travels that he meets a character like his “waiter” La Fleur, whose main defining characteristic is that “he is always in love” (33). From La Fleur, Yorick remembers the beauty, the happiness of falling in love and recognizes that it is in these moments of passion that he is at his (moral) best. “The moment I turn back on,” says Yorick, “I'm all generosity and goodwill again; and would do anything in the world for or with anyone” (34). It is in the figure of his lover La Fleur, the random character he meets on his journey, that Yorick imagines love as a reason for generosity (and not for self-realization). On the other hand, his travels bring him into contact with several lovely women, and thus with several mini-scenes of erotic excitement (all of which center on self-interest and self-fulfillment). For example, Yorick meets Madame de L in Calais when he meets the monk to whom he had previously denied charity. From this chance meeting, Yorick invites Madame de L into his carriage and they hold hands. For the libertine, holding hands would be a waste of time, a useless stepit would hinder the libertine's entry into the female body. But this is where the sentimentality differs, because Yorick derives pleasure more from subtle sexy touches and erotic moments here and there, rather than a full-blown sexual encounter. It is more than lust that he feels for Madame de L: he responds to her visible melancholy and expresses that he "pityed her from [his[ soul" (20). Erotic pleasure and moral good will are coupled in this paradigm of sentimentalism, a deviation from libertine desire. A Sentimental Journey's reluctance to admit an ending, and its commitment as a kind of preliminary text, are also evident in the narrative levels of the novel . An example of how the discourse is interrupted and extended, and therefore the closure of Yorick's erotic/sentimental journey delayed (i.e. the climax postponed), are the digressions that the main text of A Sentimental Journey makes to tell a seemingly unrelated story. This embodied narrative technique is exemplified by the tale that the notary Yorick discovers printed on a sheet of waste paper. The details of the story are less important than what is actually told and available to the public. In this story ("the fragment"), an unfortunate notary wanders the streets until he is called upon to record the last will and testament of a dying gentleman. The gentleman promises to have a rather “uncommon” and compelling story to confess, and the speech says that the notary was “inflamed with the desire to begin” (100). However, before the gripping and enticing story can begin to unfold, Yorick realizes that he has run out of paper. It is a triple denial of satisfaction, a triple deferral of the climax: the notary, Yorick and the external reader of the text are prevented from reaching total narrative/erotic satisfaction. However, here the desire is not denied, but rather dissipated through the different shackles of society. When Yorick discovers that La Fleur has used the last of her waste paper to wrap a bouquet for her love, Yorick asks him to find the piece of paper. La Fleur returns empty-handed, because that single sheet of waste paper which contains the culmination of the notarial story, which represents the end of desire at this end of the narrative, has passed through several hands. “His unfaithful mistress had given her gage d'amour to one of the count's valets – the valet to a young dressmaker – and the dressmaker to a violinist” (101). The form of A Sentimental Journey here stages the activity of foreplay, of teasing and delicately touching the reader without revealing all its narrative secrets. However, since all the individual parts were denied a complete climax, the desire contained in the lines of the notarial tale remained active (the desire remains alive even in the absence of a narrative ending). Once again, desire has here been polymorphically recanalized away from the libertine individual (extreme self-interest), and projected outward onto an extension of pleasure-seeking plurality, dissipated through a benevolent diffusion of Eros. It is important to note that while the narrative text may postpone the climactic sexual moment for Yorick, A Sentimental Journey in no way forgoes sex. The moment between Yorick and the fille de chambre appears to be a classic libertine seduction scene. In their first meeting at the Paris bookshop, Yorick refrains from kissing the young girl, wishing instead to teach her a lesson in virtue, and "ask God to bless her" (66). In the second encounter, there appears to be unresolved sexual tension between the two parties, which manifests itself in a sexually charged interaction between their hands (they pass the maid's green bag back and forth, and she slides her hand down Yorick's neck when looking.]]