The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1759

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Volumes 1-2

Volumes 3-4

Volumes 5-6

Volumes 7-8

Volume 9

Character Analysis

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Background

Authorial Context: Laurence Sterne

Laurence Sterne was an 18th-century Anglo-Irish novelist and clergyman known for his innovative narrative style. Born in 1713 in Ireland, Sterne pursued a career in the clergy and later embarked on a literary journey that established him as a groundbreaking author. Sterne’s upbringing in a military family exposed him to diverse experiences, influencing his later writings. His clerical career began in 1738 with his ordination as a priest in the Church of England. His literary career began with sermons and political satire such as A Political Romance, but he did not achieve much success.

Sterne’s most renowned work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, was published in nine volumes from 1759 to 1767. Tristram Shandy challenged conventional narrative structures. Instead of sticking to a linear plot, Sterne experimented with digressions, blank pages, and unconventional typography, presenting a narrative that mirrored the chaos and unpredictability of life itself and called attention to the conventions and contrivances of writing and print. The titular character, Tristram, barely emerges within the story, as Sterne navigates philosophical musings, humorous anecdotes, and complex character portrayals.

The reception of Tristram Shandy was both divisive and groundbreaking. Contemporary readers were initially confounded by its unconventional structure, yet its uniqueness attracted attention and acclaim from prominent figures like English critic and writer Samuel Johnson and the French satirist and philosopher Voltaire. Sterne’s narrative innovations, including his use of metafiction and playful manipulation of time, challenged literary norms, influencing future generations of writers. His subsequent works, including A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, continued to showcase his innovative storytelling and included several characters carried over from Tristram Shandy. Though not as innovative as Tristram Shandy in a stylistic sense, A Sentimental Journey was popular, helping to establish the genre of travel writing.

Apart from his literary pursuits, Sterne engaged in social and political causes, notably supporting the abolition of slavery. His involvement in the cause manifested through his friendships with abolitionists like John Hall-Stevenson and his satirical commentary on societal injustices in his works. While not overtly focusing on abolitionism, Sterne’s subtle critique of human nature and societal flaws indirectly contributed to the discourse on the abolition movement.

Sterne’s legacy endures through his innovative narrative techniques and his influence on subsequent generations of writers. His experimentation with form and structure continues to inspire modern authors seeking to challenge traditional storytelling methods. His brief literary career was cut short by his death in 1768, less than a month after A Sentimental Journey was published. Sterne established himself as an innovative writer whose unconventional style continues to captivate and intrigue readers and scholars alike.

Historical Context: The Enlightenment, John Locke, and Associationism

The Enlightenment, a period of European intellectual and philosophical transformation in the 17th and 18th centuries, ushered in a new era of scientific inquiry, skepticism toward traditional authorities, and belief in the power of human reason to understand the world. This era saw a shift from deference to religious dogma and classical philosophy toward empirical observation, experimentation, and the scientific method as advocated by thinkers like Sir Isaac Newton. In England in the first half of the 18th century, the most influential Enlightenment philosopher was John Locke, whose theories of memory and psychological development particularly influenced Tristram Shandy.

Locke championed empiricism, which asserts that knowledge comes from sensory experience. His seminal work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, challenged the prevailing theory of innate ideas, most famously associated with French philosopher Rene Descartes, which held that humans are born with certain ideas already implanted in the mind. Locke posited that the mind at birth is a blank slate, or tabula rasa, which is shaped by experiences acquired through the senses. The human mind forms knowledge through what Locke calls “association of ideas,” the process through which he envisions the mind taking in sense information and combining it through reflection to produce more complex ideas about the world:

Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and connexion one with another […] Besides this, there is another connexion of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom. Ideas that in themselves are not all of kin, come to be so united in some men’s minds, that […] the one no sooner at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate appears with it (Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. Thomas Basset, 1690, Book 2, Chapter 33).

However, Locke acknowledged that this process can go awry if the mind makes mistaken or inappropriate associations. Unfortunately, human minds are prone to such mistakes, particularly when feeling strong emotion: if a “man has suffered pain or sickness in any place […] when the idea of the place occurs to his mind, it brings […] pain and displeasure with it: he confounds them in his mind” (Locke, Book 2, Chapter 33). Once an association is forged in the mind, it can be difficult to remove, leading to irrational beliefs and behaviors.

Sterne’s unconventional narrative style in Tristram Shandy incorporates and interrogates Locke’s ideas about the reliability of sensory experience and the association of ideas. His characters’ “hobby-horses,” which are the source of many of the novel’s narrative digressions, playfully illustrate Locke’s theory of association of ideas by showing the way their trains of thought are hijacked by their personal associations with words, sounds, or objects, no matter how irrelevant they are to the actual situation at hand. The confusion that ensues challenges the notion that human cognition can be understood through empirical observation alone; the only explanation for the characters’ behavior is inside their heads. While Locke labeled such associations “madness,” Sterne takes a more sympathetic view, portraying his characters as flawed but deeply sympathetic. By weaving intricate narratives filled with uncertainties and contradictions, Sterne subtly questioned the absoluteness of empirical knowledge, suggesting that human understanding transcends simple sensory experiences.

Literary Context: Postmodernism and Metafiction

Despite being written in the 18th century, Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman anticipates many of the literary techniques that would later define the 20th- and 21st-century literary movement called Postmodernism. One of the most important features of Postmodern fiction is metafiction, a style of writing that draws attention to and comments upon its fictionality. Tristram Shandy employs several metafictional techniques. Tristram, the narrator, directly addresses the reader, commenting on the act of writing, reflecting on what the reader might be thinking or feeling, and discussing the construction of the novel itself. Likewise, Tristram Shandy’s deliberate fragmentation of its narrative defies the traditional linear progression of a novel, opting instead for a narrative structure characterized by constant digressions, interruptions, and non-chronological storytelling.

Tristram Shandy also calls attention to the form of the book itself through playful experimentation with layout and typography. Sterne incorporates blank pages, marbled pages, squiggly lines, and unconventional symbols to create visual disruptions in the text. These unconventional typographical elements disrupt the reader’s immersion in the story, calling their attention to the physical qualities of the book they are reading and the conventions of language and printing. This manipulation of form and typography echoes the Postmodern focus on deconstruction, challenging established norms of representation and disrupting the linearity of text. The self-referential qualities of Tristram’s narration and the book’s layout anticipate the Postmodern fascination with the nature of fiction, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction and between author and character and inviting the audience to question the authority of the narrative.

The content of Tristram Shandy’s story also reflects common themes in Postmodern literature. The novel’s satirical and parodic elements align with the Postmodern tendency to critique and parody established literary conventions and societal norms. Through humor and irony, Sterne subverts expectations and pokes fun at conventional storytelling methods, as well as the social and cultural norms of his time. Furthermore, the novel’s lack of a traditional resolution foreshadows Postmodern literature’s rejection of neatly tied-up endings. Sterne deliberately leaves loose ends, unresolved plotlines, and unanswered questions, inviting readers to engage actively in the interpretation and construction of meaning. This open-endedness reflects the Postmodern distrust of absolute truths and encourages readers to embrace ambiguity and multiple interpretations.

Sterne’s innovative techniques in Tristram Shandy had a profound influence on subsequent generations of writers, particularly those associated with the Postmodern movement. Authors like Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Thomas Pynchon drew inspiration from Sterne’s experimental narrative techniques, incorporating similar elements of metafiction, fragmented storytelling, and self-reflexivity into their own works.