Is There A Straight Line in This Text?: The Homo-erotics of Tristram Shandy

Abstract

This article examines the intimacy in Tristram Shandy formed between the narrator, Tristram, and the constructed reader, the Gentle Reader (this reader is gendered within the text as male). Traditionally, the erotics of the text have been read heteroerotically and autoeratically, but never homoerotically. Critics have eagerly explored all possible sexual connotation in this novel except same-sex sexuality and innuendo. The desire to read a text “straight” is what I have termed “hetero-glossia;” hetero-glossia is a reading practice which posits homoeroticism (and homosexuality) as “different” and “other” while assuming heteroeroticism (and hetero-sexuality) to be the standard or norm. In doing so, it repeatedly omits/misreads passages or texts which it defines as being different or other, namely reading the homoerotic elements in texts it wishes to read straight. Thus, my reading of Tristram Shandy looks at the relationships between Tristram and his Gentle Reader and between Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim and the jokes and innuendoes within the text dealing with same-sex sexuality. Furthermore, Tristram gives the penis a position of primacy in his own narrative and in the narratives that he tells his reader; thus, the penis, via stories, is exchanged between men. The purpose of this article is not to “out” Sterne, but to reveal that his text revels in all forms of sexuality and play.