Metafictional Narrative and Teaching Writing as Process: The Case of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy

This article uses Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy to explore how literature instructors can use eighteenth-century novels, many of which bring attention to themselves as creations of the writing process, to encourage their students to reflect on their position as writers in the twenty-first century. Gulya proposes teaching Tristram Shandy and other self-referential texts within the context of writing studies. This approach helps our students recognize the close relationship between writing and cognition and, by so doing, brings their attention to writing as a process as well as a product. Gulya also outlines some of the major benefits of encouraging students to think about writing as a process, including more vibrant peer-revision sessions and an increase in students' tendencies to take intellectual risks in their writing.