Bricolage, Analogies and Hinges: Order in the Recombinant Universe of "Tristram Shandy"

Abstract

the first chapter of The Savage Mind, Claude Levi-Strauss happily introduces old word into the lexicon of modern aesthetics-bricolage.1 Levi-Strauss contrasts the strategy of a bricoleur to that of engineer. While the engineer moves rationally and directly towards his purpose, the bricoleur uses devious means and adapts whatever is at hand to serve his needs. Rather than designing or purchasing tools for a particular job, the bricoleur engages a sort of dialogue with the of previous constructions and destructions, considers the possibilities inherent in his treasury of left-overs and builds his new structure from the debris of old. its modern sense (the sense which Levi-Strauss employs) a bricoleur is ingenious handy man or putterer who overcomes the difficulties of a current project by readapting materials and tools from previous projects. The concept seems richer still in view of the word's uses: a catapult, indirect tennis stroke, the rebound of a ball, a zigzag, a detour or a trick. It has even meant a harness used by soldiers to drag cannon through spaces too narrow for a horse. one way or another all these meanings involve strategies of indirection used to overcome problems that cannot be addressed by ordinary and more direct means. Returning to Levi-Strauss, In the continual reconstruction of bricolage earlier ends... are called upon to play the part of means: the signified [i.e., the concept] changes into the signifying [i.e., the image] and vice versa. Thus mythical thought [a kind of bricolage] builds up structures by fitting together the remains of events, and-though it is limited by the constraints of prior experiencemythical thought never tires of ordering and reordering [events] in its search to find in them a meaning. So personal is this particular form of ordering that the bricoleur gives an account of