The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne - lyzard tutoring keristars

"Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last."
---Dr Samuel Johnson

The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - I admit to feeling more than a little apprehensive about trying to tutor Keri through this notoriously difficult 18th century novel, but I have done my best to prepare for the occasion. I've re-read the novel itself, plus the introductions to two different editions; I've gotten hold of the "Florida Edition" notes, which are almost as long as the novel itself; and I've read a book of critical essays that tackle it from a wide variety of perspectives. So I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be! Just the same, I feel I should start by making the following disclaimer:

All care taken, no responsibility accepted.

Right:

Background and Introduction:

Laurence Sterne (1713 - 1769) was born in Ireland, the son of a soldier, and spent a difficult childhood following his father from posting to posting. He was eventually placed in an English school, and from there attended Cambridge. It was while he was at university that Sterne suffered the first bout of bloody coughing that signalled the tuberculosis that was to dog him all his life and eventually kill him.

Sterne took orders in 1738. His uncle was an archbishop who arranged a series of livings for him within his own gift - though Sterne seems to have left much of the day-to-day work of his parishes to his curates, while he pursued his own interests. While much of Sterne's behaviour hardly says "clergyman" to us these days, his conduct was not unusual. The church was one of the few professions deemed suitable for a gentleman, and taking orders often had more to do with the fact that there was a suitable living in the family (as it was in Sterne's case), than any particular "calling" - although that said, there is no questioning Sterne's faith.

Sterne spent most of his time in and around York, and in 1741 married Elizabeth Lumley. The marriage was rocky, to say the least. Sterne was a serial philanderer and compulsive flirt (his wife once caught him in bed with the chambermaid), and Mrs Sterne seems to have consoled herself with outbreaks of extravagant spending that created ongoing financial troubles. Both of them had serious health problems. Mrs Sterne suffered a breakdown that left her with ongoing mental health issues, while Sterne's tuberculosis frequently confined him to the house. During these times he read compulsively and widely, and retained much of what he read. He also dabbled in music and art.

Sterne was active in diocesan politics, and a successful preacher whose sermons were sometimes printed and sold. (One of his successes in this respect would later be inserted into the text of Tristram Shandy.) He was also drawn into actual politics during 1945, the time of the Jacobite Rebellion, writing newspaper articles and pamphlets that were strongly anti-Tory / anti-Jacobite / anti-Catholic at his uncle's prompting - although later there was a violent quarrel and a permanent falling out between the two. Sterne's diocesan activities also led him into conflict, when in 1759 he wrote a satirical attack upon Francis Topham, an attorney who had schemed himself into a position of power around York. The ridicule of the pamphlet had the desired effect of drawing attention to Topham's dubious manoeuvring, but it was withdrawn from circulation after church authorities convinced Sterne that it was "undignified" and hurting the church's image. However, the experience showed Sterne that he had a hitherto unsuspected gift for satirical and humorous writing. The idea of writing a sustained piece of satire for pubication took hold of him.

Tristram Shandy was published in nine short volumes across 1759 - 1767. The first two volumes were self-published by Sterne after he couldn't find a publisher willing to take the risk, while his chosen printers, after suffering through his experimentation and demands, refused to have anything more to do with the project. The first volumes were released anonymously, and became an enormous success - prompting Sterne to travel to London and declare himself openly their author. While this had the desired effect of turning Sterne into a genuine celebrity (he was presented at court, became friends with other famous men including David Garrick and William Hogarth, and attended all the best parties), it also initiated a serious backlash when it was realised that the author of the exceedingly bawdy work was a clergyman. While the first reviews of Tristram Shandy (with one serious exception to which we shall return) ran from the glowing to the puzzled but positive, once Sterne was known as the author many angrily condemnatory responses were published - which, as might have been anticipated, only increased curiosity and sales.

Sources:

Tristram Shandy is perhaps best known as a structurally complex work in which the individual whose "life and opinions" are supposed to be presented in its pages spends a full three volumes getting born, and another three in early childhood. It is also famous for Sterne's visual experimentation, in which he alters the font and margins, leaves pages blank, inserts chapters out of order, inserts line drawings, and uses asterisks, dashes and pointing hands as signifiers, among many other flourishes.

One of the most common "readings" of Tristram Shandy today, that it is a satire on the fiction of the day, particularly that of Richardson and Fielding, has been challenged by some academics who argue that Sterne had no interest in contemporary literature and did not read novels. Others have contested this, and made a case for three of the novel's main characters, Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, and Dr Slop, as reworkings of characters from Smollett's Peregrine Pickle. Smollett and Sterne, though both novelists, were conducting a personal / political feud. The one really negative review of Tristram Shandy appeared in the Critical Review, of which Smollett was the editor; while in his later A Sentimental Journey Through France And Italy, Sterne includes a parodic version of Smollett in the character of "Smelfungus".

The seeming modernity of the work's experimentation (as I like to say, it was "post-modern" before there was "modern") tends to disguise the fact that this was in many ways intended as a very conservative work. Most analysts now view Tristram Shandy as an attack upon the 18th century emphasis on learning and scholarship, and man's refusal to accept the limits that God has placed upon human knowledge and understanding of the world. For Sterne, man was best and safest when he gave himself up to trust in God, and stopped trying to unlock the universe's secrets. Much of Tristram Shandy is a satire upon the more extreme forms of scholarship, the more ridiculous "theorising" of the time, and the pursuit of what Sterne considered useless knowledge.

Some of the book's other targets are individuals to whom Sterne was politically / religiously / philosophically opposed.

The difficulty for the modern reader is identifying when Sterne is carrying out such an attack, and the object of it. While 18th century readers would have spotted without much difficulty Sterne's various allusions, most of these have been lost in time. This is particularly so with respect to this novel's so-called "plagiarisms", in which Sterne does indeed lift whole passages from other writers - but not to claim them as his own, but to re-work them to his own purposes and turn them into ridicule. He wants his readers to recognise when he is doing this.

In parallel with its attacks, Tristram Shandy is also a vehicle of praise for a number of individuals whom Sterne admired, and who shared his view of the unknowability of the world and God's purposes.

Generally, if Sterne admired another writer, he refers to him openly; if he did not, he buries his references within the text.

In the first category we find:

Miguel de Cervantes, particularly Don Quixote
Francois Rabelais, particularly Gargantua And Pantagruel
Michel de Montaigne and his Essays
John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - Locke's theory of the association of ideas is a critical factor in this work

In the latter we have:

Robert Burton's The Anatomy Of Melancholy
Tobias Smollett's Peregrine Pickle

Another important influence / source is the "Scriblerus Club" (particularly Swift and Pope) and its The Memoirs Of Martinus Scriblerus.

There are also a plethora of classical references.

Meanwhile - if anything in this text looks like a sexual innuendo, it almost certainly is one. (Pay no attention to Tristram's denials, or his reproofs of your dirty mind.)

Well...those are just some brief introductory remarks. :)

Lurking! A fantastic introductory post Liz, I've added it to my favourites.

I agree - a fantastic introduction which has re-awakened my interest in this novel. I'll follow this TR.

I read the book in 2010 and didn't like it then, but maybe it wasn't a good idea to read it with Ulysses. I am sure this thread will help me to appreciate it better.

Thank you so much for embarking on this with me, Liz. I really appreciate your research/remarks already - I'd read some about Sterne, but not very deeply, and somehow missed entirely that he was quite conservative and not keen on the Enlightenment.

You mentioned that my Visual Editions copy might have taken liberties with the visual aspects of the book - and not just the use of day-glo orange ink. There is at least one instance of a picture of a woman's face done in dot-matrix style, and then illustrations of a nose pop up here and there. I'll be completely open and say that it's the VE work that made it seem less intimidating to me, and also very intriguing - I want to see how the page full of orange lines or the arrows or the torn out pages work into the narrative.

I'm planning to take photographs or scan the pages whenever I come across a visual aspect that I find particularly striking or curious, so that anyone else who is following along with a different edition will know what I'm referring to.

Other than the Visual Editions working of the text and illustrations, I'm also intrigued by the way Sterne uses (abuses) narrative structure.

The tutored read request is because I'm just not confident in my knowledge of the cultural context from the 18th C to understand allusions, at least not for this novel - I could probably look things up myself, but I find it more intellectually rewarding to have another person guide me, as I can get too overwhelmed and not know how to focus my searches or what keywords to use when searching (one of my big problems in the Information Access & Retrieval course projects I did while attending library school). I am also bad about getting distracted from a more difficult book by a short, easy, and perhaps even less-fulfilling one, so I'm hoping that having a tutored read to talk about it will help me stay on track to finish it in less than a year.

 

So now I'm going to go start reading and see how far I can get. I have no idea if I'll be able to plan a certain number of pages/chapters per day, but I think I'll try to limit myself to 3 photographs/scans per section, and not continue on reading until after they've been posted.

We'll have to figure out a rhythm that suits both of us - and you'll have to let me know how much information is enough - which references are meaningful to you. It's very easy to go overboard! If you mark your chapters as Madeline does in her tutored reads, it will help keep us both on the same page (literally).

My copies have some of the visuals, but not others, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you have.

One of my introductions comments, "The punctuation is oral rather than syntactical; Sterne was a talker, not a grammarian."

I'm hoping that having a tutored read to talk about it will help me stay on track to finish it in less than a year.

Me, too. :)

Vol. 1: Ch. I-VIII

Well. I stopped to translate the Greek epigraph - Ταράσσει τους ανθρώπους ού τα Πράγματα, αλλά τα περί τον Πραγμάτων, Δόγματα.

I kind of guess that the epigraph probably has something to do with the themes of this volume, somehow? It often does. Anyway, my unpoetic translation, considering that I only had 1.5 semesters of Classical Greek and Google Translate is kind of stupid sometimes, is "Dogma arises from those things which disturb the people". I'm not really sure what to do with "pragmata", as I'm fairly certain our modern "pragmatism" has shifted in meaning. (Sometimes, I consider it a success that I can simply read Greek letters and have a basic basic understanding of the case endings.)

I had to reread the first chapters a few times. The note that Sterne uses punctuation according to the way the text would be spoken helped a lot for getting into the right frame to untangle the sentences, but it was still kind of complicated.

If I'm understanding it correctly, the great injury that happened to Tristram 9 months before his birth, when he was begat... is that his father ejaculated at the wrong time? when his mother asked about the clock-winding and messed up the routine? And thus Tristram is "weak with a thousand disorders" and the "continual sport of what the world calls Fortune"? (I rather liked the HOMUNCULUS section, actually, and Chapter V about the planets.)

At any rate, the paragraph which discusses Shandy the elder's routine is hidden by the page being turned down, with "Shut the door." printed along the edge, so that as you go to read the secret bit, you open the door:



(Click to embiggen at Flickr)

This hobby-horse bit is odd - at first I thought it was metaphorical in chapter VII, but then it seems to go more literal in ch. VIII, only perhaps not? And Didius is the name of the lord who "coax'd many of the old licensed matrons in the neighborhood, to open their faculties afresh, in order to have this whim-wham of his inserted" which is a sex joke, yes?

I had to read chapter VIII several times to parse the language, but it was worth it when I finally got the sense of the last line when Tristram wishes the "HOBBY-HORSE, with all his fraternity, at the Devil", after having previously said he doesn't give a whit about someone else's hobby-horse.

Here's how the dedication on the following page appears:



(Again, click through to Flickr to enlarge)

I laughed a little at the bit about his lordship's feet. I liked that a lot. And in the earlier chapter when he says this book will be more read than Pilgrim's Progress, and will become a parlour window book (to be shown off as being well-read) just as Montaigne dreaded his essays would become.

 

So I guess the summary of this for things that stuck out to me are: was I on the mark regarding the great injury to Tristram (my other suspicion was that Uncle Toby is actually his father, but then I realized I'd misread the sentences in that chapter); and the joke about Didius(?)'s hobby-horse. I'm wondering if the hobby-horse metaphor's subject won't come up in different guises later on (people's obsessions and going too long at something that bores/irritates Tristram).

Ah, right. I've uploaded the photos to my Flickr account but made them private so they don't interfere with all the Walt Disney World photos on my stream. If they're not showing up or you can't get to the bigger versions, let me know and I'll poke at it. At full-size, they're about 800px on one side, so I really don't want to post them in this thread without using one of the smaller options!

The epigram is usually translated as, "It is not actions, but opinions concerning actions, which disturb men."

This ties into the project of a whole, which is supposedly about the "opinions" of Tristram Shandy, but also the obsessive theorising of Walter and even Toby.

The hobby-horse in all its forms (including the traditional May Day form, where it is tied to fertility rites) will recur throughout the book.

Tristram's conception is the novel's first and most important illustration of the novel's ongoing consideration of "the association of ideas" and the way in which the human mind connects disparate concepts.

In this case, Walter Shandy, being a highly organised (if disturbingly undersexed) individual, likes to get all of his "duties" out of the way in a single evening. So for Mrs Shandy, "winding the clock" has come to mean "having sex" - and vice versa.

Her "interruption" breaks Walter's, um, concentration and (in Walter's opinion) initiates a chain of disasters that will follow Tristram through his life.

Read the information given about the dates of Tristram's conception and birth very carefully, and see what you make of it. While we don't suspect Toby, we may have cause to suspect someone...

Here is the relevant passage from Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

"The wrong connexion in our minds of ideas, in themselves loose and independent of one another, has such an influence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our actions, as well moral as natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after."

8> That makes so much more sense for the epigraph. My googling didn't find a translation quickly enough for me, at least for the first volume's lines, so I squinted at it to get something that made sense and seemed to fit somewhat. Pragmata = actions is a major stumble on my part.

9> I had picked up on the winding of the clock, but not the vice versa part. And, oh, the parson? because I just realized that "licensed" might mean "married" in that context, as in a marriage license. I'm not sure, though, if those things existed in 1760/1718. I always mix up when the marriage laws were instituted in England that required officialities.

10> I was getting frustrated trying to remember where I saw Locke italicised in the text, then realized I captured the reference to that passage in the photo above, on page 1.020. I hadn't expected the photographs to be that useful! ;)

I've also taken another look at the First Sunday in March through First Week in November and realized that it's only 8 months, which must be the reason behind the sardonic statement about "close enough to 9 months on the kalendar for a husband", and the question about what Walter was doing in February...and January...and December.

I suppose, then, that the reference to Locke isn't just regarding Mrs Shandy and the familial duties, but to a more general and abstract sense of, as you said in #9, leading to the chain of disasters that dogs Tristram. He must have been quite young when he was first introduced to the idea, going by the descriptions in chapter III, when he says he is indebted to his Uncle Toby for the anecdote of his birth. (Or the Homunculus one specifically?)

Chap. IX

While reviewing the bit I read before, I scooted on to the section following the dedication. It reminds me a bit of the one Eliza Haywood wrote for Love-letters on All Occasions in that it makes blatant reference to the fact that dedications paint flattering portraits of the subject in order to win favors and maybe money. Only Haywood's was fairly earnest and Sterne's is in jest (mostly?). Was it common for writers at this time to write the dedication in such a fashion (ugh, I'm blanking on the descriptor I want here), or is it that these two are satirists? Haywood's dedication was a good 20 years before Sterne's, too.

I like that: "if you want your name here, pay up and the next edition will have a portrait of you rather than this chapter, but only the bits from De gustibus... onward, and the bits related to hobby-horses — everything else is dedicated to the moon". That final bit of the chapter is also in orange typewriter font, too, for what it's worth:

Bright Goddess,

If thou art not too busy
with CANDID and Miss
CUNEGUND's affairs, --
take Tristram Shandy's
under thy protection also.

Who are Candid and Cunegund? There's a St Cunegund, patroness of Luxembourg, but I suspect that's not the referent.

It's a reference to Voltaire's Candide, in which the heroine is called Cunegund. Candide was published the same year, 1759, as the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy.

Playing games with the dedication had quite a long history (and there's a story around what Sterne does with one of the later ones!). Some people wrote sincere dedications, some people really sucked up, and some people made fun of the process.

There's critical debate over whether Walter is not Tristram's father (since he wasn't up to the task on the Sunday night nine months before his birth), or whether Tristram is born at eight months - in the 18th century, eight-month babies were considered particularly unlikely to survive and be sickly if they did. It was about the phases of the planets rather than actual biology, though. (I can't quite remember how this works - I'll look it up and edit this later!)

"Locke" should be italicised towards the end of chapter 4. Association of ideas is one of the novel's overriding themes.

We get a flurry of dirty jokes towards the end of chapter 7. "Didius", the church lawyer intent upon "inserting his whim-wham", is Francis Topham, the subject of Sterne's first written satire that I mentioned in the introductory notes. "Dr Kunastrokius" is Dr Richard Mead, a famous London physician who was notorious for his whoring - and his impotence - and who paid large sums of money to prostitutes just to let him feel them all over (hence his nom-de-plume).

(I'll add these sorts of edits as we go when I need to check to re-check anything.)

The bit about the eight-month birth goes back to Hippocrates and was only challenged in the 1750s (i.e. long after Tristram is born):

"Eight months birth...seldom or ever produces a living, or lively child... Physicians, as well as lawyers, have doubted, whether an eight months birth be legitimate and vital grounded on the authority of Hippocrates, the superstititious conclusions of astrologers, the powers of numbers, and the malevolent influences of Saturn, the doctrine that the mother's labours and pains in this month are the severest, and her danger greatest..."

So Tristram is either literally illegitimate, or illegitimate in the sense that his birth is cursed. Take your pick. :)

"Whim-wham" was an expression used to denote strange ideas or fantastic notions, but in Rabelais it is used as a euphemism for penis.

Along the same lines, "hobby-horse" was 17th century slang for "prostitute".

Just to clarify that last post header, I'm keeping one copy of TS at work and will respond to which of your comments I can during my lunch break, and I have the other copy, the notes and the essays at home, so sometimes there will be a second, later post correcting or expanding on what I said earlier.

13> It's a reference to Voltaire's Candide, in which the heroine is called Cunegund. Candide was published the same year, 1759, as the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy.

Lesson to Keri: if you have a hunch that Sterne is referring to something kind of famous, but then doubt yourself because...well, just because? It's probably best to go with the hunch. (I haven't read Candide myself, obvs, or I might've known of Cunegund and made the connection more easily.)

It was about the phases of the planets rather than actual biology, though.

Perhaps why the discussion of living on Jupiter or Saturn right after mentioning 9 kalendar months.

14> Along the same lines, "hobby-horse" was 17th century slang for "prostitute".

AHA. SO MUCH FUNNIER. I think I may have heard that once before, and I was tempted to look up the etymology, but of course I've no good dictionary to refer to. Still, I was picking up sexual innuendo in that section (end of Chap VII and all of Chap VIII) and now it all comes together so much better.

I need to read Rabelais one day, I think. I actually have an abridgement of Gargantua and Pantagruel meant for French school children, but I suspect it's missing all the dirty bits.

I'm starting to do my daily reading now, and we'll see how far I get - it looks like I'm going to be reading about the midwife and the parson (Yorick?). I'm a bit late getting started today, but I had an exceptionally long nap this afternoon.

Perhaps why the discussion of living on Jupiter or Saturn right after mentioning 9 kalendar months.

Yes, to emphasise Tristram's mistimed conception and ill-starred birth.

"Hobby-horse" has a whole spectrum of meanings and the specific emphasis tends to shift without warning. It stretches from the child's toy, to the pagan-mythology character, to the slang term for obsession or fixation (this is the way the term is most commonly used here), to the sexual meaning.

I actually have an abridgement of Gargantua and Pantagruel meant for French school children, but I suspect it's missing all the dirty bits.

That...seems likely. :)

Yorick the parson is Sterne's alter-ego here, and actually broke the bounds of this book to go on being his alter-ego in other contexts. After the sermon in this book was well-received, Sterne published it with a number of others in a volume called The Sermons Of Mr Yorick. (He was criticised for associating sermons with a "comic" character, but the sermons themselves were praised.) Yorick is also the central character / narrator or Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France And Italy.

At the same time, Tristram himself is also a representation of Sterne.

Chap. X - XVIII

Stopping at the point where he warns the reader to not assume any particularity about Jenny, but that it will all become clear in a future volume.

This is about 30 pages for me - I wanted to try to get to the end of Chap. XIX, but found myself going cross-eyed at DULCINEA and TRISMEGISTUS on the next page, which means it's probably time for me to stop for the night. I had to reread a few sections, partly because they were convoluted and partly because I was listening to music (Jake Shimabukuro's "Peace Love Ukulele" album), which kept distracting me. But once I made myself stop refreshing the TIOLI thread or looking at Twitter, I was able to get down to business.

 

In Chap. 10, he refers to a HERO for the second time, when speaking of the horse Rosinante (and saying how the parson and the horse are of a kind). Does that have any particular significance, or is it just referring to the subject of this anecdote?

I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments of this reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which I think comes up to any of the honest refinements of the peerless knight of La Mancha, whom, by the bye, with all his follies, I love more, and would actually have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the greatest hero of antiquity.

So our narrator thinks well of the parson for (doing away with the fine, expensive horses in order to use his money for more things, and also for bringing a midwife in) - or, really, putting up with the ribbing he gets for it? but he thinks even more of Don Quixote? But mostly there's something about the language in this paragraph that I enjoyed.

I'm kind of confused by Chap. 12. We get this story about the parson and how he had a wild youth, with gambling and women, and the proof of it is in the fancy saddle and bridle he never uses on his rickety old horse. He's purportedly related to the Yorick in Hamlet, except not really, but maybe, because Shakespear based his plays on history (mostly). And then in Chap. 12 is the story about Yorick's death in youth due to wild ways. In skimming it over again to verify my memory, I'm thinking that perhaps this is another Yorick that the narrator met in Denmark in 1741, and not the Yorick who is the parson of 1718?

Chap. 12 ends with the text forming a shape, so that "Alas Poor Yorick" as spoken sort of trails off down the page, like the folks walking away from the grave and wailing it. Then the next two pages are everything from the dedication (photographed above) through that trailing "Yorick" layered, to create almost solid black rows across the page. I'll take a photo of it tomorrow. It's very interesting, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to indicate. Immediately before the dedication is the hobby-horse section, and Chap. 13 starts with a return to the midwife (but only to remind the reader of her existence).

I liked the end of Chap. 13 that talks about the map and size of the world, and the promise that it will be "added to the end of the twentieth volume ... after my life and opinions shall have been read over, (now don't forget the meaning of the word) by all the world". That's the part that really stood out to me, but I just enjoyed reading that whole piece.

The legalese in Chap. 15 was really complicated! I was so grateful for the summary: "In three words, — 'My mother was to lay in (if she chose it) in London." Some of the phrases, I think set phrases? like "— to wit, —" and "— That is to say, —" were rendered in orange in my book. (Also, "Accounts to reconcile:" through "Panygericks to paste up at the door:" were blockquoted and orange in Chap. 14.)

I laughed a bit at Chap. 17 and 18 for the story of returning to London and Walter's moods, and then the arguing for/against the midwife or the doctor. It's not very kind towards Mrs Shandy, but stereotypes & cultural beliefs are what they are, and I take it that Mrs Shandy is the one who brought all the wealth to the marriage.

Oh, yes, another thing - Sterne doesn't think too well of the mess going on in France at the time, does he? It's 1760, so we've yet to see it all come to a head, but iirc there's starvation of peasants and the government is going bankrupt at this time, due to futile wars. At least, he has Walter saying things that sounds that way, though I'm not sure he's got the cause quite right (everybody amassing in the metropolis). Or, maybe, what he has as a cause is really just a symptom.

Rosinante is Don Quixote's horse, and gets several long passages of description in the course of that novel - "...so admirably delineated, so slim, so stiff, so lean, so jaded, with so sharp a ridge-bone..." The HERO is Don Quixote himself.

Rosinante is also described as looking as though he is wasted by consumption, which ties the horse into the overall scheme of alter-egos, since Tristram, like Sterne, has consumption (tuberculosis).

Sterne was rather fixated on Hamlet, and drags all sorts of references to it into his various works. By making his Yorick (i.e. himself) "of Danish extraction", that is, descended from Hamlet's Yorick, a jester, he adds another shade to his self-portraiture.

The 1741 reference is a sudden jump into Tristram's future life and only connected to Yorick by way of illustration. He didn't meet another Yorick, but he travelled through Denmark - after which he had trouble believing that his Yorick really could have been of Danish extraction, as he was "mercurial and sublimated" rather than "cold" and "exact". (And don't forget, Sterne is describing himself whenever he speaks of Yorick.)

Then we get another jump to the end of Yorick's life. This has the first and one of the most famous of the novel's visual's a blacked-out page representing a tombstone, complete with inscription - "Alas, poor Yorick!" This has been done in a variety of different ways in different editions - some placing the inscription on the "tombstone", for instance.

Sterne found legal-ese humorous and often uses it in contexts where it doesn't really belong as a joke - for example, in the piece about the midwife, she is described as receiving all the rights, members, and appurtenances whaysoever. Sterne loved the word "appurtenances" and uses it wherever he can.

This novel's attitude to women is one of its major areas of debate - we'll see what you think as we go along. :)

At this time a woman without money would probab;y not have married unless she was extremely well-connected or extremely beautiful, so we can assume that Mrs Shandy did bring a reasonable fortune. However, Walter was a "Turkey merchant" (i.e. a partner in a business that traded with the Ottoman Empire) and also the eldest son, so he may have been well off on his own account.

While Tristram Shandy was being written, England was involved in the Seven Years War with France. All the direct military references hark back to the wars fought under William and Mary and then Anne, but there would have been touches to contemporary issues. The "mess in France" at the time was also England's mess.

(Generally, times of agricultural distress did cause mass-migration to the cities, but Walter is only picking out the arguments that suit himself, as always.)

In bits and pieces as I have time today:

Then we get another jump to the end of Yorick's life.
- This is what confused me. The end of Yorick's life appears to be about a young man who hasn't followed the straight-and-narrow, more like the Yorick that was described prior to the midwife/horse events. So, to me it reads as though it's an alternate path, he died but he kept living.

Rosinante is Don Quixote's horse - I thought he was conflating the two horses here. I'm starting to wish I had a footnoted version!

I suppose I should pay attention to alter-egos, or whenever I can't keep track of the subject of a description, look at it as though it might be an alter-ego thing.

"Alas, poor Yorick!" This has been done in a variety of different ways in different editions - some placing the inscription on the "tombstone", for instance.

There's a tombstone shape, then the repeated bit, and then all black. I guess this edition chose to do both.

However, Walter was a "Turkey merchant" (i.e. a partner in a business that traded with the Ottoman Empire) and also the eldest son, so he may have been well off on his own account.

Okay - I was thinking "Turky merchant" was snarky/derogative, not literal!

While Tristram Shandy was being written, England was involved in the Seven Years War with France. All the direct military references hark back to the wars fought under William and Mary and then Anne, but there would have been touches to contemporary issues. The "mess in France" at the time was also England's mess.

You can see the gaps in my knowledge of history here, or at least, the spots where I'm less familiar with the timeframes. I knew France was involved in wars and going bankrupt and that there had been a 7 Years War with England, but couldn't have told you when that war occurred. I've learned almost all my European history (that doesn't directly involve or impact the US) from having to figure out the context of literature, like this, and I've not read much mid-18th century at all - usually earlier and later.

At any rate, I'll probably need more contextual things like this, going forward.

 

I think one of the troublesome parts of the book, which makes it more difficult for me to follow the narrative, is that he only sometimes gives a clear indication of a shift in topic, and doesn't always care to remind the reader of the referent for pronouns.

So I see the clear reference to Don Quixote and his horse, but at the same time, I'm still thinking that he's talking about Yorick and using Rosinante as an evocative, to say "basically, the horse is the same horse".

Rosinante was famous in his own right, so Sterne could count on a certain mental image of a poor, scrawny, bony, knocked-kneed animal being conjured up by his readers. After his borrowing and lending and replacement problems, Yorick keeps the horse that no-one would want to borrow from him.

The time shifts back and forth are one of the major games that TS plays with the reader and can only be dealt with by staying alert. The umbrella of "association of ideas" is built into this, so the shifts are only connected by what's going on in Tristram's mind. The familiar building of a novel, brick by brick, as it were, is missing and we have instead something more like a very long conversation with someone who rambles.

The time shifts back and forth are one of the major games that TS plays with the reader and can only be dealt with by staying alert.

One of the reasons I wanted to read the book...!

I might try to slow down a bit. I didn't get any new pages read yesterday, just rereading prior sections to improve my understanding. Even when something is just beyond my ability to follow along, I enjoy the cadence of the language and the images evoked, so I keep reading even if I've passed a whole pile of things that I might want to have clarified.

I loved the legalese about the marriage contract, even though I could hardly make heads or tails of what it was saying. :)

Well, I'm here for the long haul, so don't be afraid to slow down and go back over ground as much as you need to.

I finished volume 1 this morning.

I need to go through and pull out the bits I want to talk about, but slowing down and removing distractions helped a lot, I think. There were a lot of sections that I really appreciated for being funny or snarky or just lovely language use that I'll point to.

Lovely!

I accidentally fell asleep into a long nap after typing that yesterday - and when I woke up, my baby brother was visiting. Eep! (I had to show him the book. "Look, look! Look how interesting this book design is!")

(And then today we went out and did sibling things. Bah, I am proving to be very slow at this thread thing! I hope it's not too troublesome. But I won't feel too guilty about today, because I miss him since he went away to uni.)

Chapter XIX

This is starts out being about names and the way they reflect on a person's character. And then it proceeds to talk about Shandy Sr's great skill with logical debate despite not having been educated at Oxbridge, or something like that. Except he had a thousand little sceptical notions of the comick kind to defend, which I suppose is meant to explain his skill. Then follows a warning against, I'm not sure, whimsical contrary ideas? At any rate, because of this, Shandy Sr has developed strong opinions about names and an unconquerable aversion to TRISTRAM - I'd like to see how he ended up being christened such! but I know it's a long way off...

And I know it because of Chapter XX

which refers to the end of Chap. XIX and how one must be born before one is named, at least that is the case since the Shandys aren't Papists.

I delighted in the dialogue undertaken in Chap. XX, the section which includes "I do insist ... that you immediately turn back ... and read the whole chapter again".

The MEMOIRE, by the way, is printed entirely in orange. It was easy to skip past, since I didn't feel much like trying to read early 18th century French.

Chapter XXI

About the Shandy Family and Uncle Toby - the injury to his groin, am I to take it that he has been castrated or some such, and thus his being given to feminine emotions and weeping and embarrassment?

I think I'm missing a layer of something with this story, and particularly what exactly is the Argumentum of Shandy Sr. I get that the Shandean System is his philosophising about people's given names, and that Toby would whistle or hum that song to avoid answering... I think the Argumentum is supposed to be the removal of emotion/will from science/philosophy? thus the "in science, there is not MURDER, only DEATH" or somesuch?

Chap. XXII

Ah, a whole chapter about digressions and how to cut them away would ruin the thing, as they are made to cross back with the main topic and give light ("sunshine") to everything. I suspect, somehow, that this is a central chapter to many a critical reader. ;)

Chap. XXIII

Another address to the reader that I rather liked when I came across it - "And therefore, I beg, Madam, when you come here, that you read on as fast as you can, and never stop to make inquiry of it." This one almost seemed like it was directed at me especially!

At any rate, there's some talk about drawing characters - I suppose he means the representation of the characters in a symbol of some kind. And with Toby (ah, we've got back around to him again), it's his HOBBY-HORSE, the use of which to draw the character and the aptness is defended in Chap. XXIV.

I think he's saying that Toby never let up about the groin injury?

Chap. XXV

Another element of narrative structure that I liked a lot. The very end of it says "I am so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probably conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page, — I would tear it out of the book" - and of course! that's the very last page of the volume!

 

I didn't mean to summarize each chapter as I paged through to pick out my notes, but I think it's helping me a bit with the understanding, still, so I've not edited them out. It's also probably good for reference...

There were quite a lot of structural quirks and fourth-wall acknowledging in these chapters, which worked well for me. I also think I was able to grasp the main parts of most of it - Sterne thinks Catholics are idiots, that names have some power (or else it's just Shandy Sr who thinks that, but I think it's something Sterne agrees with), and that one needn't be an academic to have the skills - and it's a bit dangerous to go about philosophising all the time, just look at what Shandy Sr got into, and he's not even a professional scientist.

But I suspect I'm missing something about Dinah and the story of Toby's wound and the personality differences between him and Shandy Sr. That might come clear a bit later, or I could just not be picking up on it properly.

Seriously, though, the rock from the parapet fell and injured Toby... was he lying down or something when it hit him? Because I can't really figure out the physics otherwise.

You're doing very well! Please do continue to summarise if it helps.

Hmm...it seems that most of what I have to say here concerns Uncle Toby's groin! However, I comfort myself with the reflection that no matter what I say, I won't end up filling chapters and volumes with it, like Sterne. :)

The question of exactly where Uncle Toby got wounded, and exactly what were the consequences, is something that the novel dances around for its entire nine volumes. The rock was propelled like a piece of shrapnel due to an explosion, so it didn't just fall but flew on an angle.

Whatever the reasons, we notice over this novel that all three Shandy men are either disinterested in or incapable of sex. (We get around to Tristram's own problems in this respect eventually.) On one hand I think this is a covert criticism of their passion for systemising and philosophising and describing - too much thought and not enough action - but on the other (and this, in historical terms, is very interesting to me) we are clearly still operating on the social assumption, which was openly believed all through the 17th century, that women and not men were the highly sexed ones - at least partly because they were lacking the same intellectual development and had more of an "animal nature". How we get from this point to the sexless Victorian woman is something I'm tracing through my reading.

So here we have the sexual misdeeds of Aunt Dinah, intimations that Mrs Shandy is anything but content with her regular-as-clockwork sex life (and is in fact Tristram illegitimate??)...and then there's the Widow Wadman... :)

BUT - as we've seen, the "higher development of men", as illustrated here by the Shandys and their "systems", was obviously not in Sterne's opinion anything to brag about. The 18th century was very much a time of naming and classification rather than an increase of practical knowledge. Sterne, from a religious viewpoint, found most of this fact-gathering pointless, and criticises it through Walter in particular, and his calculated / rational approach to things that aren't and shouldn't be.

Oh, goodness. I should have known that the whole issue with Uncle Toby wouldn't be answered so easily! I've got to Vol. 2 Chap. 3 now, and we're still in it. Another lesson for me about the way things go.

which was openly believed all through the 17th century, that women and not men were the highly sexed ones - at least partly because they were lacking the same intellectual development and had more of an "animal nature".

Thank you! That's what I was missing with Dinah - it's something I knew in the back of my head, but hadn't connected to Shandy.

In fact, that view of women vs men was a large element in our discussions of early modern women's writing in the seminar I took that introduced me to Aphra Behn &c. It's part of why I find Haywood's Fantomina to be so fascinating and enjoyable (and Love-letters on all occasions for that matter).

Speaking of that seminar, I want to read more Restoration novellas and plays soon. I should get Love letters between a nobleman and his sister from the used bookshop so I can take care of that when I finish Shandy. I've got Oroonoko due for a reread, too. And The Rover (which I thoroughly loved the first time 'round).

 

Volume 2

Chap. 1

I had made a note for myself to look up Namur and all the militaryish terms, but after reading further, I don't think I shall, unless having a better understanding of what's under discussion (though Sterne claims that it's impossible to untangle, which is the whole trouble for Toby) will give way to a fantastic pun.

It seems that the description of the battle is a miniature version of The Life and Opinions, with the confusion and backwards forwards and Toby having to get a map and learn about all the other little things. And I see this is the hobby-horse referred to earlier.

Chap. 2

Locke's Essay on Human Understanding is referred to here. My studies at the University of Wikipedia tell me that this is the source, or one of the sources, of the "tabula rasa" school of entomology that we were taught back in middle school.

The section with Dolly the maid is fascinating. At first I thought it was illustrating the 3rd cause of obscurity and confusion ("memory like a sieve"), but now that I go back to look at the chapter for summing up of main points purposes, despite having read the section thrice already, it seems to be illustrating the 2nd cause ("slight and transient impressions when organs are not dull"). It is as thought he specifically broke up the discourse with this detailed but brief story on a completely different subject to illustrate the sieve memory, by distracting and calling to attention a new topic entirely, but it's also pretty clear that the wax and thimble are symbolic.

I feel a bit silly that it's only now that I realize how it fits together with the 2nd cause.

And, of course, after all that, just like with the reason for Toby's modesty, the cause of his confusion is something completely different, which leads to a fantastic out-of-context line: 'Twas not by ideas, — by heaven! his life was put in jeopardy by words.

Chap. 3

This chapter concerns Toby's expansion of his studies from the map to other maps and regions and even into physics and geometry, and how once he learns one thing to suit, he finds that there's something else he needs to understand...

And two more quotes that are very fitting:
But the desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

Intricate are the troubles which the pursuit of this bewitching phantom, KNOWLEDGE, will bring upon thee.

That last one comes from a really well-done paragraph. The orange em-dashes really highlight how the phrases become more broken as they proceed along, as Shandy grows more frantic and shouty.

 

I don't think there's much in these three chapters that were difficult, though I did almost entirely skip the military and geographic stuff, assuming that it's not all that important except as an illustration of Toby's studies. I'm really behind on photographing the interesting visual aspects of the book. I might do that tomorrow afternoon while the light is good. there are only a couple right now - it seems the latter volumes have quite a lot more going on than these early ones do (except for poor Yorick).

I'll try to clarify some of the references you note here, including some of the military ones, but it will have to wait until I get home tonight. :)

I hope - I won't say "I will", but I hope - to be doing Behn's Oroonoko and The Fair Jilt, and her translation of Agnes de Castro, later this year.

I don't think you need to know too much about the specifics of Namur. Briefly, after James II - abdicated? whatever word you like - in 1688, William and Mary were crowned in his place. There was then three years' conflict between England and Ireland, which concluded with the Battle of the Boyne and then the fall of Limerick; Toby and Trim were involved in this campaign.

William then began a campaign against the French, most of which took place in Flanders. Many of the Flemish towns were "walled" and so the war was a series of sieges (hence Toby's fixation). The French took Namur in 1692; the English captured it in 1695 after a ten-week siege that was the turning point of the campaign.

I wouldn't worry too much about the specific terms to do with fortifications - I'll define them for you if you want, but the fact as no-one Toby tries to describe the siege to understands him, either, which is why: 'Twas not by ideas, — by heaven! his life was put in jeopardy by words.

As for this:

I feel a bit silly that it's only now that I realize how it fits together with the 2nd cause.

I think you're very silly for feeling a bit silly. :)

You're doing marvellously well - carry on!

It's slow at work this week (in between exhibitions) so I took an extra long lunch today to try out a new deli/grill a bit farther away then I normally go for lunch. And then I had plenty of time to read while eating a very delicious grilled chicken caesar salad wrap (an amazing invention! eating a salad with only one hand, so the other is free to turn pages! no plate/tableware necessary!)

It's so satisfying to be able to read during my lunch break (which is usually only 15 minutes - I don't work a full day, and I can't really leave my desk for very long, being the only receptionist and with no real back-up).

And it's still slow enough for me to post now, rather than waiting until I get home, when I'm too tired. :D

Chap. 4

More discussion of the narrative itself, in defending the choice of ending the previous chapter where it did (in the heated entreaties to Toby) as the best way to represent the very much not "cold and vapid" studying.

Following is a description of Toby's descent into the madness of study, and desire to finally be cured of the injury. It sounds to me like it was a bit of malingering, or maaaybe not bothering to do what was needed to be done to heal, because he didn't have an incentive to care. Or it's a narrative convenience. (Naah...)

Chap. 5

In which we learn about Corporal Trim and his buddyship with Toby, and his tendency to run over things. There's a nice bit of typesetting when he suggests to Toby that going to the country estate would be perfect: "we could manage this matter to a T." has T. in orange type 4 rows tall, overlaying the previous paragraph.

I kind of love the idea of the two injured men going off together to recreate a battlefield on the estate, one limping from an old wound and the other confined to a chair due to a new injury. Sterne is right that it could very well make another full story...

And now we're back to the fireside, unless we go on another tangent before returning completely. I have no idea what Toby was saying before he was cut off by the narrator. It was about the night of Tristram's birth, perhaps?

Two fairly straightforward chapters, I think. I kind of love old Toby!

Ah, long lunch! - that most civilised of inventions! I'm lucky - I usually do get some reading done at lunchtime (which is technically 30 min, but sometimes creeps out to 45).

I'm not a great salad eater, but a big fan of the one-handed meal.

sounds to me like it was a bit of malingering, or maaaybe not bothering to do what was needed to be done to heal, because he didn't have an incentive to care.

A bit of both. But don't forget that wound healing in the early 18th century was not what wound healing is today, neither the approach nor the time it took.

We will see a great deal more of Toby and Trim and their hobby-horse over the remaining volumes, don't worry!

What always stays with me here is Toby growing ill and almost dying from his inability to communicate.

I can't eat without doing something else so usually if I leave the building, I eat while walking back, or if I stay in, I nibble my sandwich while sneaking in a few pages - but it's never enough time to get very far in a book. Since I started Shandy, though, those 5 or 10 minutes have been plenty to do some rereading of earlier parts.

A bit of both. But don't forget that wound healing in the early 18th century was not what wound healing is today, neither the approach nor the time it took.

Right! I did totally forget that recovery time would be more difficult 250 years ago. Still, 3 years is an awful long time to have apparently no real recovery, and then suddenly get a good deal better in only a few months after deciding to do so. :D

What always stays with me here is Toby growing ill and almost dying from his inability to communicate.

I missed that, thank you for mentioning it. I might reread this section tonight/tomorrow, then, to see why I missed that aspect.

Toby's slow recovery is probably partly psychosomatic, but there are references late in his recovery to "draining the wound" which makes it sound like it just wasn't closing over.

This book is really getting to me - the night before last (or maybe it was yesterday's nap? it's all running together), I had a very intense dream about Tristram Shandy.

I finished reading volume 2 and while flipping through the next volume, saw that there were odd orange diagrams I hadn't noticed previously, and that they rather resembled car parts. And as the dream went along, it turned into a book/film sort of real thing, half words and half images, which were straight out of the film adaption of Tom Jones from the '70s (or maybe another Fielding book? Andrew something?) and also a '20s film featuring motor cars (not quite a motoring romance, but similar. In the dream, my brother was smirking at me as I expressed disbelief that Tristram Shandy would own such a run-down jalopy of a motor vehicle, especially in 1752 (my dream was very exact about the year), since combustion engines weren't really invented for 100 years at least (and I tried to math it out in my head, too, in the dream). Brother sat there smirking, though, claiming to have read the book twice already and that I'd see it all make sense soon enough, but it startled him at first, too.

The crux of this, and the reason I find it amusing enough to share (besides the fact that, wow, it's really getting to me!), is that at one point I shouted "this can't be right! it doesn't make sense!" and the Tristram Shandy guy (who may have been played by Steve McQueen) looked at me and asked, "When has anything in my life ever made sense?"

So there you have it. :P

Before I get to the reading through today, here are the photos of design elements I've fallen behind on:

Yorick:




Legalese in orange:


Footnote-type thing + French Doctors Regarding Christening:


Between volumes:


We could manage this matter to a T.:


Manicule indent:


Another manicule:


Sermons/Bible chapters:


I haven't yet got to the latter two, but figured I'd finish off Volume 2 photos and post them all at once.

Wow!!

I know the pointing hands and the isolated "Alas, poor Yorick!" were Sterne's own doing - I'm not sure about any of the others, but I think he would have approved the highlighting of the legalese. :)