1. mar 31­20.03
1

2. mar 31­20.05
2

3. mar 31­20.06
3

4. The central joke and symbol of Sterne's grand comic novel is the
clock, which plays a role in his hero's fate from the literal moment
of his conception ‐‐ an act interrupted by his mother's question to
his father, "Pray, my dear,...have you not forgot to wind up the
clock? (I.I)
mar 31­21.59
4

5. Space and Time
It is two hours, and ten minutes,‐‐‐and no more,‐‐‐‐‐cried my father, looking at his watch,
since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived,‐‐‐‐‐and I know not how it happens, Brother Toby,‐‐‐‐‐
but to my imagination it seems almost an age.
‐‐‐‐‐Here‐‐‐‐‐pray, Sir, take hold of my cap‐‐‐nay, take the bell along with it, and my
pantoufles too.‐‐‐‐‐
Now, Sir, they are all at your service; and I freely make you a present of 'em, on condition
you give me all your attention to this chapter.
My father, who had an itch, in common with all philosophers, of reasoning upon every thing
which happened, and accounting for it too‐‐‐‐‐proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this, of
the succession of ideas, and had not the least apprehension of having it snatch'd out of his
hands by my uncle Toby, who (honest man!) generally took every thing as it happened;‐‐‐‐‐and
who, of all things in the world, troubled his brain the least with abstruse thinking;‐‐‐the ideas
of time and space,‐‐‐‐‐or how we came by those ideas,‐‐‐‐‐or of what stuff they were made,‐‐‐
or whether they were born with us,‐‐‐or we picked them up afterwards as we went along,‐‐‐or
whether we did it in frocks,‐‐‐or not till we had got into breeches,‐‐‐with a thousand other
inquiries and disputes about INFINITY, PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY, NECESSITY and so forth, upon
whose desperate and unconquerable theories so many fine heads have been turned and
cracked,‐‐‐never did my uncle Toby's the least injury at all; my father knew it,‐‐‐and was no
less surprized than he was disappointed, with my uncle's fortuitous solution.
Do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my father.
Not I, quoth my uncle.
‐‐‐‐‐But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about?‐‐‐‐‐
No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby.
(III.XVIII)
mar 31­22.00
5

6. mar 31­20.06
6

7. mar 31­20.06
7

8. mar 31­20.06
8

9. mar 31­20.07
9

10. I WISH EITHER MY FATHER OR MY MOTHER, or indeed both of
them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had
minded what they were about when they begot me; had they
duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were
then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being
was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation
and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the
very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary,
even the fortunes of his whole house might take their
turn from the humours and dispositions which were then
uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all this,
and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should
have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in
which the reader is likely to see me.—Believe me, good folks,
this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may
think it;—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits,
as how they are transfused from father to son, &c. &c.—
and a great deal to that purpose:—Well, you may take my
word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense,
his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon
their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains
you put them into, so that when they are once set a­going,
whether right or wrong, ’tis not a half­penny matter,—away
they go cluttering like hey­go mad; and by treading the same
steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as
plain and as smooth as a garden­walk, which, when they are
once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able
to drive them off it.
Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to
wind up the clock?—Good G..! cried my father, making an
exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the
same time,—Did ever woman, since the creation of the world,
interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was
your father saying?—Nothing.
mar 31­20.36
10

11. mar 31­20.07
11

12. mar 31­20.07
12

13. mar 31­20.07
13

14. mar 31­20.07
14

15. mar 31­20.07
15

16. mar 31­20.08
16

17. Tristram Shandy is of those rare works of literature that seem to
have been written in the wrong century. Even as the modern
form of the novel was being born, Sterne was already messing
with it: stepping outside the narrative to address the reader,
apologizing for "losing" chapters that later showed up in their
entirety, even including an all­black page to mourn the passing
of one character and a blank page for the reader to fill in his own
description of another.
mar 31­22.06
17

18. Sterne was a radical revolutionary as far as form is concerned. It was typical of him to lay bare the device. The aesthetic form is presented
without any motivation whatsoever, simply as is. The difference between the conventional novel and that of Sterne is analogous to the
difference between a conventional poem with sonorous instrumentation and a Futurist poem composed in transrational language...
Upon first picking up Sterne’s Tristam Shandy, we are overwhelmed by a sense of chaos.
The action constantly breaks off, the author constantly returns to the beginning or leaps forward. The main plot, not immediately accessible,
is constantly interrupted by dozens of pages filled with whimsical deliberations on the influence of a person’s nose or name on his character
or else with discussions of fortifications.
The book opens, as it were, in the spirit of autobiography, but soon it is deflected from its course by a description of the hero’s birth.
Nevertheless, our hero, pushed aside by material interpolated into the novel, cannot, it appears, get born.
Tristram Shandy turns into a description of one day. Let me quote Sterne himself:
I will not finish that sentence till I have made an observation upon the strange state of affairs between the reader and myself, just as things
stand at present‐an observation never applicable before to any one biographical writer since the creation of the world; but to myself‐and I
believe will never hold good to any other, until its final destruction‐and therefore, for the very novelty of it alone, it must be worth your
worships attending to.
I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve‐month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my fourth
volume‐and no farther than to my first day’s life‐’tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty‐four days more life to write just now,
than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it‐on the contrary, I
am just thrown so many volumes back‐
But when you examine the structure of the book more closely, you perceive first of all that this disorder is intentional. There is method to
Sterne’s madness. It is as regular as a painting by Picasso.
Everything in the novel has been displaced and rearranged...
It is common practice to assert that Tristram Shandy is not a novel. Those who speak in this way regard opera alone as true music, while a
symphony for them is mere chaos.
Tristram Shandy is the most typical novel in world literature.
Viktor Shklovsky: from Laurence Sterne: The Novel as Parody, 1925
mar 31­22.49
18

19. mar 31­20.08
19

20. mar 31­20.09
20

21. Full text
Plots and characters
Special exhibits Critical interpretations
Blogs about: Sterne Laurence
The Body is Bawdy in Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy"
Castration, Circumcision, and the Fear of Impotence in Laurence Sterne
An introduction to Shandy Hall
mar 31­20.08
21

22. Tristram.Shandy.A.Cock.And.Bull.Story. Tristram Shandy
ORGANIZATION
Tom McCarthy on Tristram Shandy
Tristram Shandy ­ audiobook The Black Page
mar 31­20.26
22