Tristram Shandy and the Dialectic of Enlightenment by Jens Martin Gurr (original) (raw)
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Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy: A Tradition of Dissent
2013
amuel Johnson's famous dismissal of laurence sterne's Tristram Shandy ("nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last." 1), may be one of the most shortsighted critical claims in literary history. after all, sterne's novel has been variously, and repeatedly, cited as a major influence on modernism and postmodernism 2 , as a forerunner to the major metafictional texts of the twentieth century, and calvino's claim that Tristram Shandy is the "undoubted progenitor of all avant-garde novels of our century," (ctd.in "laurence sterne", The Guardian) too bears testament to its overwhelming significance for 20 th literature. furthermore, the influence of sterne's novel continues to be felt in some of the dominant contemporary cultural art forms: it has been successfully adapted by michael winterbottom as A Cock and Bull Story (2005), a film about the making of a film adaptation of Tristram Shandy, and martin rowson's major graphic novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was published to critical acclaim in 1996. within sterne studies, too, new editions of Tristram Shandy appear almost annually, and there continues to be an enormous outpouring of innovative critical work on sterne, and on his most famous work. since the turn of the millennium there have been numerous studies of sterne published: thomas keymer's
Tristram Shandy and the Problematics of Origin: The Hobby-Horsical World of Infinite Jest
Alzahra University, 2021
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, one of the most unorthodox works ever written, substantially differs from most of the novels of its time and later eighteenth century in its plot, narration, and treatment of characters. In this paper, different aspects of the novel that challenge and deconstruct the points of origin in the life and character of Tristram Shandy are examined. It is demonstrated that Tristram Shandy detaches itself from the unconditional stages in the traditional narratives that are often taken for granted, including the birth as the genesis of the characters, a solid belief in the purposefulness of a narrative for moral or educational ends, the fixity of beginnings, and the rational order of ideas in the human mind. The article is divided into four major parts, including the birth, history, life, and human subjectivity, and aims at showing several unique aspects of the novel while being mindful of the close reading of the text as well. To this end, the article concentrates particularly on the events revolving around Tristram Shandy, his father Walter, and Uncle Toby. The Lockean association of ideas, which Sterne turns into a parody of Locke’s original thesis later in the narrative, is explored in the article as well.
Music and Rhetoric in Tristram Shandy: Challenging Eighteenth-Century Rational Intellectualism
A study of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy as a rejection of Lockean rational discourse as a means of communicating to escape solipsistic tendencies. The essay focuses on classical rhetoric and music as affective devices by which humans communicate effectively. Written to fulfill the requirements of English 513: Special Topics in English Literature -- Comedy and Satire in Eighteenth Century Literature.
This essay investigates the role of laughter as a force of sociability among ineluctably different epistemological selves in Sterne's novel. Drawing from Hobbes's alternative theory of laughter, "Laughing without offence [that] must be at Absurdities and Infirmities abstracted from Persons and when all the Company may laugh together,” I argue that Sterne's novel suggest we not only tolerate Hobby-Horses and the misunderstandings they generate, but that with a self-reflective, skeptical stance towards our own understandings, we can draw from them those social pleasures and joys that add something to this, our "Fragment of a life."
Tristram Shandy as an Anti-Lockean Novel
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel first published in 1759 and written by Laurence Stern (1713-1768). From reading the novel, it's plausible to discern that its main objective is a man doing his best to decipher the experiences around him, but what Tristram doesn't do is present a "closure," which can be interpreted as anti-Lockean intention considering Locke's epistemology highlighted in his Essay on Human Understanding: "'tis the Knowledge of Things that is only to be priz'd; 'tis this alone gives a Value to our Reasonings, and Preference to one Man's Knowledge over another's, that it is of Things as they really are, and not of Dreams and Fancies." (Essay, iv, iv, 282)
The Lockean Effect on Tristram Shandy
Sterne’s artistry takes shape through Tristram’s conversational and narrative skills in the novel. This method is associated with one of the thinking theories of Enlightenment Period: ‘The association of idea’. This theory is coined by an English philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), in his work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). Locke’s work illuminates the readers in many ways to understand the artistry and Tristram Shandy of Sterne.
Reason and heart in Tristram Shandy: some ideas on the theory of knowledge
1997
1 The question of the narrator's identitity seems to be a moot point in Sterne's novel. Consider quotations like the following: M y good friend, quoth 1 -as su re as 1 am 1-and yo u are yo u. -And who are yo u? said he. -Don 't puzzle me, said l. (VII. xxxiii. 500). For a deeper analysis of this question, see J. E. Swearinger ( 1977). 2 It is not surprising that E. M. Forster is unable to classify Tristram Shandy as a novel: Ifyou /ay rules for the novel, and then apply them to Tristram you have to admit it wasn 't a novel. You have been en.joying it -but it wasn 't a novel. See E. M. Forster (1962, 182).