Augustan literature the theme of fallen women in "" (1724). Thematically, Defoe's works are consistently Puritan. They all involve a fall, a degradation of the spirit, a conversion, and an ecstatic elevation. This religious structure necessarily involved a "bildungsroman", for each character had to learn a lesson about him or herself and emerge the wiser. The sentimental novel, or "novel of sentiment", developed after 1740, and among the most famous examples in English are Samuel Richardson's "Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded" (1740), Oliver Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield" (1766), Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (1759–67), "Sentimental Journey" (1768), Henry Brooke's "The Fool of Quality" (1765–70),
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (by José Paulo Paes, 1984), Catalan (by Joaquim Mallafré, 1993), Norwegian (by Bjørn Herrman, 1995–96), Finnish (by Kersti Juva, 1998). Well known in philosophy and mathematics, the so-called "paradox of Tristram Shandy" was introduced by Bertrand Russell in his book "The Principles of Mathematics" to evidentiate the inner contradictions that arise from the assumption that infinite sets can have the same cardinality—as would be the case with a gentleman who spends one year to write the story of one day of his life, if he were able to write for an infinite length of time. The paradox depends upon the