Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy: Satire and Narrative Form

The Distinctive Title of Tristram Shandy

A Parody of Traditional Novel Titling

The title of Tristram Shandy parodies the tradition of titling novels like ‘Of Lives and Adventures’. The novel’s title, in which a romance given name is undercut by a commonplace, even comic or satirical, surname, had other kinds of precedent in recent fiction.

The Oxymoronic Nature of the Title

The title itself is an oxymoron: a rough summary, in its satirical incongruity, of the mode of writing known as anti-romance or comic romance.

Sterne's Experimental Prose and Comic Romance

Instability of 18th-Century Narrative Terminology

The instability of terminology for long fictions during Sterne’s lifetime was one symptom of the experimentalism of prose narrative during the 18^th century. However, Sterne clearly identifies with the tradition of the comic romance. In one of his last letters, he wrote: ‘I was writing a Romance… it is most comic’.

Tristram: An Unconventional Hero in Yorkshire

In the choice of his own hero, Sterne picks one who seems anything but heroic. He is Tristram, not Sir Tristram, nor even the Trismegistus (43) his father desires him to be before the baptism scene. As opposed to the numerous romances of faraway places with similar surrounding names, this fiction is located very firmly in Yorkshire—and Tristram has opinions, not adventures.

Narrative Innovations and Conventional Routines

Hypertrophied Devices in Sterne's Fiction

From a technical perspective, Sterne’s fiction is full of hypertrophied versions of the novel’s conventional routines. These include:

• The prefatory first-person narration
• The interpolated tales
• The self-conscious digressions

These and other characteristic devices can be observed from Cervantes to Fielding.

Awareness of Stale Conventions

An awareness of reigning conventions, and of their growing staleness, shaped the sometimes anxious and defensive experimentalism of novels during these years.

Synopsis of Tristram Shandy's Opening

Tristram's Conception and Early Life

Tristram Shandy begins his autobiographical tale with the story of his conception, in which his mother interrupts the sexual moment by asking an irrelevant question about the winding of the clock. The author speculates that the circumstances in which a child is conceived profoundly influence its eventual mind, body, and character. He laments his parents' careless demeanor at this decisive juncture: "had they duly consider'd how much depended on what they were then doing...I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world." As it stands, he blames his own "thousand weaknesses both of body and mind" on their negligence. Tristram reveals that the whole circumstance of his coming into the world occurred as a series of such accidents and misfortunes. Stating succinctly that he was born on November 5, 1718, he promises to give the full details of his birth eventually, but only after a detour through his "opinions." He admits from the beginning that his narration will be unconventional, and he begs the reader to be patient and to "let me go on, and tell the story in my own way."

Introduction of Key Characters and Satire

Meandering through the history of the town midwife, Tristram takes the opportunity to satirize the obscure legal language of her license document. He also introduces the character of Parson Yorick, whom he relates to the jester Yorick in Hamlet and to Cervantes's Don Quixote. At the suggestion of his wife, Parson Yorick sponsors the training of the midwife as a service to the town.