The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy English Literature Essay

The first fully emergence of English novel was in the eighteenth century. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), and Henry Fielding (1707-1754) have always been regarded as pioneers in the rise of English novel. Appealing to the middle class, these novels are the direct product of middle class’s ideals, assumptions, and values. One of the shared themes among the eighteenth century novelists is the reformation in the manners of the age. Seeking to improve the morals of the age, they aimed for presenting models of virtue. Amrollah Abjadian declares that Defoe’s works primarily depict “the world of romance and the realm of distant adventures.” (169). Furthermore, considering the works of Richardson, Abjadian states that Richardson’s novels tend to be more of a “moral preaching” which are the presentation of human problems and moral conflicts in society. Moreover, Henry Fielding’s novels predominantly concentrate on the “solid actuality of English life as most people of his age experienced” (169). Although these writers are regarded as the dominant novelists of the age, the most original author of the age of Johnson is perhaps Laurence Sterne.

According to the time period in which Laurence Sterne lived (1713-1768), he is one of the eighteenth century novelists. However, one can follow the traces of fictional and narrative elements of a postmodern text in his prominent novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767). Since it differs considerably from the imaginative writings of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, this atypical creation makes Sterne be seen out of place in his own era. Most critics regard it as a “postmodernist text in every sense except the moment in which it was written” (Byrd 47). Steve Coogen calls it “A postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post about”. The novel is described in The Norton Anthology of English Literature as a deliberate frustration of all the expectations of its readers, “the plot has not the logical order of a beginning, middle, and an end, instead it interrupts scenes in order to digress or to recount past or future events…” (845)Though, the question remains in the fact that how a novel which precedes postmodernism by over a century and a half can be viewed as a postmodern text.

There are a number of reasons, quite justifiable to the fact that, Sterne’s novel stylistically deconstructs the eighteenth century novel’s traditions. More specifically, it is read as the parody of eighteenth century novels. Regarding its preface, Lois Ratner explains that:

Tristram abandons his characters at the moment before his own birth to launch into his preface (ІІІ, xx meaning Volume ІІІ, chapter xx), a parody of conventional prefaces. This interruption wittily undercuts the convention of straightforward narration. (459)

Tristram’s genuine pattern of narration, disordered chapters, black and blank pages, stories within stories, anecdotes that go nowhere, self conscious and self reflexive narration, are all the idiosyncratic features that call the readers’ attentions to ponder on the fact that Sterne’s masterpiece is clearly distinguishable from its contemporary novels.

The twentieth century critics believe that Tristram Shandy is a novel of our own time, inconveniently published in the 1760s. There are a number of remarkable features that make the novel be judged under the glasses of postmodernism. ‘Metafiction’, ‘Anti-Novel’, ‘Self reflexivity’, and ‘self conscious narrative’ are all the terms that are recently coined to describe various aspects of postmodern texts.

A deviation from the standard elements, antinovel, as its name suggests, violates the established norms and traditions. Thus, it plays deliberately against readers’ expectations and overtly does not respect the conventions of story-telling. Cuddon states that these novels “deter the reader from self-identification with the characters, yet at the same time persuades him to ‘participate’ but not vicariously” (44). Further he points out to the principal features of antinovel as: “Lack of an obvious plot; diffused episode; minimal development of character; detailed surface analysis of objects; many repetitions; innumerable experiments with vocabulary, punctuation and syntax; variations of time sequences; alternative endings and beginnings” (44). As it will be further in the essay discussed, some of the above mentioned elements are detectable in Tristram Shandy.

Written in nine volumes, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, as far as its title suggests, can be considered as a “Bildungsroman” novel. As it is clarified in A Glossary of Literary Terms, the subject matter of these novels is about “the development of the protagonist’s mind and character in the passage from childhood through varied experiences into maturity…” (200-201). Nonetheless, as Ratner asserts the process of events throughout the novel “belies” its title, “for by the end of the ninth volume the reader has learned almost nothing about the hero” (460). Considering the minimal development of characters and events, as well as detailed surface analysis of the objects, one can hardly see a “go-ahead plot” in Tristram Shandy. For instance, it takes six volumes to cover the simple chain of events regarding Tristram’s conception, birth, christening, and the accidental circumcision. In fact, such a simple plot hardly advances. There are the detailed descriptions of the domestic life of all the Shandy households, specifically about Tristram’s father and uncle, Walter and Toby. The preoccupations of the characters with their pastimes, obsessions, and “hobbyhorses” are the materials for Tristram to play with. Therefore, his narration becomes a large game which incorporates all the other characters.

According to Ratner the flow of the story is “discontinuous and nonlinear” (459). Sterne has no straightforward, concise approach in his novel. Since Tristram is the fictional author-character in the story, the presentation of events in their proper chronological order is refused. Tristram gives himself the authorial right to move backward and forward in time, and as the result his narrative is both “digressive and progressive”. The unusual structure of the book is emphasized by the digression as its central narrative strategy. So there is no orderliness in Tristram Shandy and the narrator hardly manages to tell the story he sets to tell at the beginning of the novel. The birth of the hero, which the author desires to describe on the first page, does not finally occur until Volume ІX; and instead, forty five chapters of the book mainly focus on the events that took place prior to his birth. The stories of Mr. and Mrs. Shandy, Uncle Toby, and Widow Wadman, as well as Tristram’s own story are all picked up, dropped, and picked up again and again. The manipulation of the years and events are of great importance. For example, the end of the story is narrated first, then the beginning and finally the middle.

Metafiction along with self-conscious narrator and self-reflexive novel are all the terms that are widely used to describe postmodern novel. The traces of these aspects can be found in Tristram Shandy as the forerunner of postmodernism. Coined by Robert Scholes, metafiction is a term that describes “the growing class of novels which depart from realism and foreground the roles of the author in inventing the fiction and of the reader in receiving the fiction” (Abram 203). Moreover, Abram states that the self- conscious narrator “shatters any illusion that he or she is telling something that has actually happened by revealing to the reader that the narration is a work of fictional art…” (243-244). As the result in self-reflexive novels, there are a number of references to the process of composing the fictional story itself. This form of narration is also called “process writing”, a text in the very act of creation and change.

Tristram Shandy is an unconventional creation that mocks all the conventions of the new genre of novel. Unlike Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding’s novels where the main interaction was among the characters in the book, Sterne draws the readers into an active and participatory role, so the main interaction is between the author and the reader. The readers are not only involved in the act of reading, but also in the act of ‘re-writing’. For instance, the readers are provided with an empty page in order to picture their own description of Widow Wadman’s beauty. Or the two entire black pages after the death of Yorick are included to ask the readers to sympathize equally with Tristram. Besides, the misplaced chapters require a constant connection that is needed to be between the author and his readers in order to have a better understanding of the text.

In addition, it is called a metanovel since what the story is about is of secondary importance to how it is told. Byrd believes that Sterne’s writing is termed postmodern because it is a rejection of realism, “turning from the objectivity of external truth to examine inner states of consciousness” (84). The novel repeatedly points to itself as an object in order to question the relationship between reality and fiction. Thus, the whole structure of the book is the reminder of the fact that the novel is a material object, not just a “transparent story” as in realist fashion.

The profound and lasting influence of Sterne’s authentic creation on the fictions of both modernists and postmodernists is undeniable. His masterpiece is believed to be the antecedent of the thought of Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, and of course James Joyce. Therefore, his attempt to establish a direct interaction between the narrator and the readers and have their full involvement, along with his emphasis on the “constructedness” of the plot; make him be the forerunner of postmodern novel. Lois Ratner perfectly mentions that Sterne admits that his entire novel has been a shaggy-dog story, an absurdist ramble rather than a coherent tale:

L____d! said my mother, what is all this story about? —

A COOK and a BULL, said Yorick— And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard. (IX, xxxiii)