Laurence Sterne, Tristam Shandy (1713 1768)
characters:
Tristam Shandy is unique in the history of English literature and a parody
which made Sterne famous all over Europe. Sterne influenced European
writers as Diderot and the German Romanticists.
In a period when the conventions for the novel were being laid down by
writers such Defoe, Fielding and Richardson, L. S. challenged those conventions.
Tristam Shandy was published in 9 vol (first 2 vol. appeared in 1760- made him
popular and well received in London and 7 others appeared in the following 10years).
The novel, breaks all the rules, including those of language and punctuation,
and avoids the idea of traditional plot.
Sterne tried to show the difficulties involved in writing a novel and in
communicating with language. Unfinished sentences, blank pages, pages
containing just one word, exuberant digressions, wordplay and dashes are just
some of the innovative features of this remarkable work.
The most revolutionary aspect is the time structure. Sterne does not present the
reader with a chronological order of events. This means that ideas and stories
are mixed up together in a confused way just as they are in our minds.
The story
In simple terms Tristam Shandy is an autobiography in which Tristam tells
the story of his life from infancy, through adolescence, and up to early
manhood.
Most of the book is a series of digresssions . The most shocking fact about the
structure of the novel is the lack of chronological sequence. The novel begins
with Tristam Shandys conception and not with his birth.
Tristams birth is only described in volume III. The novel continues with the
breeching of the hero, then with the description of the authors travel in France
and of the story of the king of Bohemia.
Tristam goes into great detail in describing his father, Walter, and his Uncle
Toby who is obsessed with military fortifications. Uncle Tobys death is
described in Volume six, but he is alive at the end of volume nine. The book
ends in Volume IX with another digression which leaves the reader
wondering why the book should finish at that particular point.
The narrator, Tristam, introduces the reader to a series of memorable
- Walter, Tristams father, whose obsession is science and is involved in all
kinds of fantastic and paradoxical situations
- Uncle Toby, Walters brother, whose passion is the recreation of military
sieges in a childish war game. However the most attractive character of the
novel
- Corporal Trim, who shares Tobys love for all things military
The characters are revealed through their mental processes. The characters
make up a humorous group of eccentrics.
Uncle Toby and Parson Yorick are generally regarded as two of the great comic
characters in English literature.
Tristam Shandy represents an innovation in character drawing-they are
revealed through their mental processes.
By the hobby horse theory which he derived from the theory of humans,
Sterne meant that each mans character is determined by a ruling passion.
Structure:
- consists in a succesion of episodes
- the title points to a change of perspective from the exterior world of
phenomena to the inner world of mental processes
(the name shandyborrowed from Yorkshire dialect meaning mentally
emballanced, intoxicated, drunk)
- Sterne inserts essays and legal documents into the pages of his novel
- the past is not clearly cut off the present
3 influences on Tristam Shandy:
- Rabelais - took over the mocking attitude
- Cervantes - adopted the theme of the false perception of reality
- Montaigne - took over the art of digression: slow rhythm, lack of conflict, use
of frequent flashbacks alternating with present moments
The time of the narrative is the subjective one- that of the mind. His innovation
consists in his attempt to integrate the subjective time (of the mind) into the
objective one (historic)
1
Style
- the language is rich and expensive, with long sentences sometimes interrupted. Not
everything can be expressed, so some sentences stop in the middle

L. Sterne is considered to be the father of the English anti-novel.