Romanticism Goethe and the young Walter Scott. Both Chatterton and Macpherson's work involved elements of fraud, as what they claimed was earlier literature that they had discovered or compiled was, in fact, entirely their own work. The Gothic novel, beginning with Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" (1764), was an important precursor of one strain of Romanticism, with a delight in horror and threat, and exotic picturesque settings, matched in Walpole's case by his role in the early revival of Gothic architecture. "Tristram Shandy", a novel by Laurence Sterne (1759–67) introduced a whimsical version of the anti-rational sentimental novel to the
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman instance, are reminiscent of the works of the metaphysical poets of the 17th century, and the novel as a whole, with its focus on the problems of language, has constant regard to John Locke's theories in "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding". Arthur Schopenhauer cited "Tristram Shandy" as one of the greatest novels ever written. As its title suggests, the book is ostensibly Tristram's narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make explanatory diversions to add context and colour to his tale, to