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PATRICK, DUNCAN. "Tristram's Dialogue with Death and Thomas Patch's 'Sterne and Death,'" Shandean, 16 (2005), 119-136.
Mr. Patrick continues his campaign to read Sterne against the grain of recent attempts to establish his Anglican seriousness, not by refuting the evidence offered in those attempts but by bringing new documents to bear on his predetermined viewpoint. This is to be regretted because Mr. Patrick makes a good case here for reexamining, in relation to Sterne, the writings of Charles Blount, whose Anima Mundi (1679) was an early deistic (or skeptical) treatise. Moreover, Mr. Patrick reads the Patch caricature of "Sterne and Death" with panache, finding in it another allusion to the writings of Blount.
Nonetheless, his reading of Tristram Shandy in the shadows cast by these findings suggests nothing...