A Central Consciousness at Work Beneath the Surface Artlessness: Narrative Strategies in “Tristram Shandy”

Junfang Xu

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.3p.137

Abstract

‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’ (hereafter shortened to “Tristram Shandy”) is a unique novel written by British author Laurence Sterne in the eighteenth century. While Sterne’s contemporary readers may have conflicting viewpoints about the artistic value of “Tristram Shandy” because of its surface artlessness and chaos, readers today in the contexts of such twentieth-century critical theories as postmodernism, existentialism, and deconstruction, find it congenial and more intriguing. I argue that despite the apparent chaos of this novel, the author-narrator Tristram is a central consciousness that holds the whole work together. And I believe Sterne narrates his story in such a peculiar way in conformity to his own perception of the outside world. Specifically, this paper aims to explore the inventive narrative strategies employed in Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy” in the three aspects of narrative structure, time-shifting technique and self-conscious narrator. Amazingly, “Tristram Shandy” presents a wholly new notion of creative writing, one that goes beyond its time, and has unbreakable connection with twentieth-century literature.

Highlights

‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’ is a unique novel written by British author Laurence Sterne in the eighteenth century
“Tristram Shandy” is an extraordinary novel written by British author Laurence Sterne in the eighteenth century
This paper aims to explore the inventive narrative strategies employed by Sterne in “Tristram Shandy” in the three aspects of narrative structure, time-shifting technique and self-conscious narrator

Summary

A Central Consciousness at Work Beneath the Surface Artlessness

Ous books, chips and pieces of historical relics and literary remains of past civilizations in the eighteenth century. The narrator constantly comments himself as writer, and on this book he is writing, not just as a series of events happened to the Shandy household, and as a conscious mental product of a struggling writer He is quite confident with his capability to maneuver the narrating process, and about the success and potential influence of this book: “As my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the world, and if I conjecture right...be no less read than the Pilgrim’s Progress itself.”(I.iv.6) He keeps telling us the trouble he encounters as he narrates; how he tries desperately to synchronize writing time and story time. The narrator does not have free will to reveal and leap from the psychological portrayal of one character to another; all we can see is mirrored through the eyes of Tristram the narrator

INTRODUCTION

CONCLUSION