C. S. Lewis and the Shandean Cause

Abstract C.S. Lewis alludes to Laurence Sterne in often striking ways and over the course of five decades. I explain these allusions, detailing how the eighteenth-century satirist informs Lewis on a wide range of topics: theology, rhetoric, sex, humor, et cetera. Additionally, we find that Lewis’s Christian conversion accompanies his Shandean conversion: that is, he embraces Christianity as he embraces Sterne, or vice versa, which I discern to be more than a coincidence.