Laurence Sterne

 Introduction
Laurence Sterne was born in Clonmel on November 24, 1713 and died on
March 18, 1768, London. He was an Irish-born English novelist and humorist,
the author of Tristram Shandy (1759–1767), an early novel in which the story
is subordinate to the free associations and digressions of its narrator. He is
also known for the novel A Sentimental Journey (1768).

 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is also known as

just Tristram Shandy, is an experimental novel by Laurence Sterne. It was
published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven
others following over the next seven years. It purports to be a
autobiography of the eponymous character. Its style is marked
by digression, double entendre, and graphic devices.
.
 Narrative Time and Real Time

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman remains one of the
most engaging novels of the 18th century. In it is narrator, Tristram Shandy,
sets out the impossible – to tell the story of his own life and most importantly,
opinions.
The story begins at the moment of his conception which he explains by
means of a link with John Lockle’s principle of the association of ideas and
diverts into endless digressions, interruptions, stories-within-stories, and other
narrative devices.
The focus shifts from the fortunes of the hero himself to the nature of his
family, environment, and heredity, and the dealings within that family offer
repeated images of human unrelatedness and disconnection.
The Title of the novel is parodical because the “the adentures“ were the
leitmotif of the 18th century novel.Ttitles are replaced in this particular case by
the “life and opinions“ of a gentelman. Ironically, even if the first six volumes
are written in the first person, Sterne gives the readers very little details of his
life and nothing of the opinions of the main character. In Tristram Shandy’s
case, Sterne decides to laybare his devices and deconstruct the narrative
space between the reader and the author.
Self-reflexive narrative in Tristram Shandy can roughly be divided into two
main parts,each of which can correspondingly encompass its own
subdivisions.
The first part, above all,includes those parts in which Tristram reflects
processes of the novel’s construction, and displays the formation of chapters,
pages, and narrations. Presenting the accounts of his life and the
complications he is confronted in their recounting, Tristram frequently steps
out of the narrative proper and explicitly depicts the act of writing.
In the second part, Tristram directly addresses the readers, making them
conscious of the fact that what he is composing is merely an artefact. These
instances in Tristram Shandy, in which Sterne invites his readers to take part
in his unconventional narrative.
Self-conscious narrative in Tristram Shandy is an element that holds the
whole book together. Sterne’s predilection for this type of narration is revealed
right from the beginning when Tristram sets off to write about his life and
opinions.
The more Tristram carries on writing his life accounts, the more readers gain
knowledge of its unconventional narrative, and to a large extent, are forced to
think about a broader issue that looms large beneath the text: the parody of
conventional narrative.
Tristram’s self-reflexivity calls attention to its disorderly plot and atemporality,
and ineffect, involves the readers in his progression of writing. For instance, in
volume three of the novel, in the course of the childbirth, when Tristram’s
Uncle Toby falls asleep and Dr. Slop is engaged with the midwife, Tristram
enjoys a moment of commenting on the composition.
All my heroes are off my hands;——’tis the first time I have had a moment to
spare,— andI’ll make use of it, and write my preface.”
Having presented his intended preface, Tristram goes on to write a list of
critics and friends who might be the addresse of the very preface. Therefore,
“Tristram Shandy is unusual in its radical asymmetry, in its frequent shifts in
time and level, moving backwards and forwards, without sustaining a temporal
ground or consistent diegetic location.
Another narrative technique which is precisely used in postmodernist novels is
to providethe readers with a better understanding of the fundamental
structures of the narrative. Suchnovels refuse to allow the readers a passive
role of a consumer and explicitly remind them the artificiality of the novel that
they are reading Sterne interrupts his novel and self-reflexively asks the
readers a question:  I have to ask is,how you feel your heads?
The narrative of Tristram Shandy is nowadays taken as a prime illustrations
as distruptive, fragmented, open, disjunctive open narrative.
Sterne's presence inside the narrative changed the course of traditional
novelistic interpretations. A familiar device in Tristram Shandy’s narrative is
frequent shifts in time, and going against a linear plot. Yet, the significance of
this device is in its self-reflexivity.
In other words, Sterne decides on defying the conventions of a linear plot,
and concurrently discusses the matter with his readers. 
Sterne broke all the rules: events occur out of chronological
order, anecdotes are often left unfinished, and sometimes whole pages are
filled with asterisks or dashes or are left entirely blank.
In addiction, the text of Tristram contains numerous interwoven narrative
subtexts that serve comentaries upon the primarly narrative – the marriage
contract, The Memoire of the Sorbonne Doctors, the sermon.
The book is truly about one Tristram Shandy and not the young Tristram
Shandy but, rather, the author. Tristram-the-narrator’s presence is greatly felt
throughout the book. We seen into Tristram’s life not by the narrator telling
about it, but through the views of Tristram-the-author.
Questions
1) What is your opinion about Laurence Sterne’s style? (Use at least
2 adjectives)
2) What is the protagonist of the story and what is so special about
him?
 Biblography
1. Corse support: Conf univ.dr.Valentina Stîngă – English Literature in the
18th century.
2. https://www.shmoop.com/tristram-shandy/genre.html
3. Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy: A Casebook
editat de Thomas
4. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tristram-Shandy Key.
5. https://www.academia.edu/24356996/Mirrors_in_the_Text_Self-
reflexive_Narrative_in_Laurence_Sternes_Tristram_Shandy?
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