Nature Versus Art as a Comic Pattern in Tristram Shandy

Abstract

In Tristrarn Shandy, the separate worlds of art and nature collide in carefully planned confusion. Mere happenstance is often interpreted as pure design, while the most blatant instances of artifice pass for what is real or genuine. Although the art in this comic confusion takes many forms, it is usually created by the characters' use of the figures, gestures, and topoi of traditional rhetoric. Few readers can forget, for instance, how Tristram will mistake an unconscious turn in an ordinary conversation for some permeditated figure of speech, or how Trim and Uncle Toby will respond to an artistic representation (such as Yorick's sermon) as though it were a literal picture of life. More than just a literary joke, this nature-versus-art comedy permeates Sterne's characterization, his description of action, and indeed the form of his novel. It is most obviously present on the stylistic level, however, where a single word-or even the absence of a single word-can evoke an elaborate and often pedantic rhetorical analysis. Consider, for example, the way Tristram responds to Toby's simpleminded explanation of Mrs. Shandy's obstetrical preferences.