The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy: An Analysis

Introduction

Laurence Sterne was an Anglo-Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is

best known for his novels such as “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,

Gentleman”, and “ A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy”; but he also

published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. This paper

is focused on Sterne’s work entitled “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy”.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram

Shandy) is a humorous 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 (vols.

3 and 4, 1761; vols. 5 and 6, 1762; vols. 7 and 8, 1765; vol. 9, 1767). Probably Sterne's

most enduring work, it purports to be a biography of the titular character; its style is

marked by digression and amplification. Sterne was widely read, and his reading is

reflected in Tristram Shandy. Many of his particular similes, for instance, are

reminiscent of the works of the Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century, and the

novel as a whole, with its focus on the problems of language, is in constant reference to

and explicit dialog with the theories of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human

Understanding

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Opinions_of_Tristram_Shandy,_Gentleman).
Analysis

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 color to his tale, to the extent

that Tristram's own birth is not even reached until Volume III.

This novel is more of an autobiographical type telling the story of the

protagonist’s conception. In the first volume the character reveals that the whole

circumstance of his coming into the world occurred on a series of such accidental

misfortunes. Stating that concisely that he was born on November 5, 1718, he promises

to give the full details of his birth eventually. But as we read his story, in the first three

volumes, it is all about his opinions on how he existed. It is in the fourth volume of the

novel when he finally presented the full details about his birth. In this case we can say

that the novel begins in the “ab ovo”. Ab Ovo, as defined in Dictionary.com, is from the

beginning. In the novel, the story began from the beginning before the beginning, from

his conception rather than his birth. This strategy leads him into the problem of relating

events of which he could have no knowledge, which would call into question his status

as an autobiographical narrator. He anticipates and answers this concern by explaining

that he has learned the story of his conception from his Uncle Toby, who in turn heard it

from Walter Shandy. The effect is to emphasize that Tristram's accounts are not

fictional--but neither should we take them as perfectly objective.

But if we are to look into the series of events, the events are not in its

chronological order. Again and again in the course of the novel Tristram defends his
authorial right to move backward and forward in time as he chooses. As a result, we can

therefore say that the main and most striking characteristic of this novel are its

unconventional time scheme and self- declared digressive- progressive style. We can

say that its time scheme is unconventional because the way that the events are

presented are not in its proper order. It may seem to be unusual to that of the other

stories or novels because usually, in a story, the events are placed properly according

to when it happened. This time scheme that Laurence Sterne used in his novel made it

exceptional from the others. The other one is its digressive- progressive style. The

digressive-progressive technique presents problems to the narrator in telling the story of

his life and set out his opinions. By fracturing the sequence of the stories he tells and

interjecting them with chains of associated ideas, memories, and anecdotes, Tristram

allows thematic significance to emerge out of surprising juxtapositions between

seemingly unrelated events.

Conclusion

The work of Laurence Sterne is hard to understand because of the way he wrote

it. Aside from that, the sequencing of events and popping out of unrelated events as

well gave confusion to the text. Therefore, it gave us a hard time to analyze the novel’s

plot. But through this style of writing, it caught our attention and made us pine for the

next volume of the story. One of the effects of this technique is to draw the reader into

an unusually active and participatory role. Tristram counts on his audience to indulge

his idiosyncrasies and verify his opinions; Sterne asks the reader to approach the

unfolding narrative with a more discriminating and critical judgment.