Highlighting the reader as a character in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy may seem trivial considering the clear use of fictional readers within the text ("sir", "madam", "lord", et al.); however, the manner in which Stern renders the reader a character, and creates the illusion of in-text participation, is far more profound than sporadic discourse with these aforementioned sirs and madams. This essay, through analysis of Volumes 1 and 2 of Tristram Shandy (with latter volumes in mind), seeks to illume Sterne's methods of subverting the novelistic form, interacting with the reader, and engaging with the theme of time in relation to the question of the reader as a character in Tristram Shandy.
Comparing Newton's Third Law to Tristram Shandy's excursive style, Judith Hawley wrote: "For every attempt to make himself [Tristram] go in a straight line, there is an opposing impulse to deviate"1. This Newtonian peculiarity of Tristram's narration also encapsulated the book's criticism, as for every laudatory reviewer there seemed to be a censorious critic, who found the book's salacious japery unbecoming of a cleric. However, what many abstemious critics of Tristram Shandy missed, was Sterne's pasquinade of novelistic forms, which helped fashion the circumstances for the reader to become a character in Tristram Shandy through removal of the detachment between reader and narrator. Mary S. Wagoner's comment, "...main business ostensibly, would be the account of Uncle Toby, but evidence points rather to its being the conversation between Tristram and the reader"2, substantiates Sterne's success in making the reader's relationship with the narrator paramount.
A key element in removing the estrangement between narrator and reader in Trist...
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...ialogue - Essays by and in response to Douglas Jefferson, ed. Janet Clare and Veronica O'Mara (University College Press, 2006).
Keymer, Thomas, Sterne, the Moderns and the Novel, (Oxford University Press, 2002).
New, Melvyn, "Sterne and the Modernist Movement", in The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne, ed. Thomas Keymer (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Ross, Ian Campbell, Laurence Sterne - A Life, (Oxford University Press, 2001).
Sterne, Laurence, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Ian Campbell Ross (Oxford World's Classics, 2009, Oxford University Press).
Wagoner, Mary S., "Satire of the Reader in Tristram Shandy", in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol.8, No.3 (Autumn 1966; University of Texas Press), pp.337-344.
Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel: Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, (Chatto & Windus London, 1974).
...n & Co., Inc., 1962); excerpted and reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 3, ed. Carolyn Riley (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1975), p. 526.
Texts are a representation of their context and this is evident in Robert Stevenson’s novella: “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, where many values of late nineteenth century Victorian England values were reflected through the themes of the novel using language and structural features. These values included: technological advances, reputation and masculinity and are demonstrated in the text through literary and structure devices as well as the characterisation of the main character.
in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter, Ph.D. Vol. 235. The.
Writing a journal from the perspective of a fictional eighteenth century reader, a mother whose daughter is the age of Eliza's friends, will allow me to employ reader-response criticism to help answer these questions and to decipher the possible social influences and/or meanings of the novel. Though reader-response criticism varies from critic to critic, it relies largely on the idea that the reader herself is a valid critic, that her critique is influenced by time and place,...
Stillinger, Jack, Deidre Lynch, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D. New York, N.Y: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print
*Abrams, M.H., ed., et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sixth Edition. Vol.I. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.
The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 2308. Print.
In his report, “Keeping His Head”: Repetition and Responsibility in London’s “To Build a Fire,” Lee Clark Mitchell shares that most naturalist aficionado quiver at the style. This is in part because the enthusiasts thought London’s plot was “childish” and speed was sluggish (76). Mitchell suggests that these readers are ignoring the style and viewing it as irrelevant but he believes the style should be paid attention to because London does not write in the standard naturalist way. He finds London's style rather “compelling” and “curious” and believes other will too if repetition and tenses are accounted for (80, 78).
The main characteristic of the new literary form of the novel according to Ian Watt is "truth to individual experience" (4) and its new shape is created by a focus on the individual character. He is presented in a specific definition of time and space. The second section of this paper will show how far this is realized in both of the novels. In the third section I want to analyze the characters' individualism in connection with the claim to truth and their complexity in description.
Tristram Shandy begins the narration of his life by rewinding to the moment of his conception, which his mother disrupted with a question: “Pray, my dear, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?” (Sterne 6). In this introduction, Tristram ironically reveals the main anxiety of the family: that time will, metaphorically, stop for them. Just as Tristram traces his misfortunes to his nearly derailed conception, the rest of the Shandys suffer from fear that their family legacy will not continue, especially considering that their one surviving son, Tristram, has squandered his prime years for potential courtship and fatherhood on meticulously recording the events of his childhood. The cornerstones of the novel, including Tristram’s conception, his Uncle Toby’s groin injury in the war, Tristram’s brother’s death, and Tristram’s accidental circumcision all reveal literal and metaphorical castration anxieties that are deeply tied to the family’s thinning bloodline. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy documents the fear of thinning legacy and declining
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The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Christ Carol T., Catherine Robson, and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. 1172-1181.
Narratology divides a ‘narrative into story and narration’. (Cohan et al., 1988, p. 53) The three main figures that contribute a considerable amount of research to this theory are Gerard Genette, Aristotle and Vladimir Propp. This essay will focus on how Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights can be fully appreciated and understood when the theory is applied to the text. Firstly, I will focus on the components of narration Genette identifies that enhance a reader’s experience of the text. Secondly, I will discuss the three key elements in a plot that Aristotle recognises and apply these to Heathcliff’s character. In the final section I will apply part of the seven ‘spheres of action’, Propp categorises, to Heathcliff’s character. However, not all of Narratology can be applied to a text. This raises the question; does this hinder a readers understanding and/or appreciation of the text? This paper will also address this issue.