The Revolt Of Sterne.

“The Revolt of Sterne”
A. A. Mendilow

In

Laurence Sterne: A Collection of Critical Essays
Ed. John Traugott

By
Soha Faried & Nada Tarek

1. Sterne’s Realism:

1.1. Sterne was very much interested in the relationship between reality and fictional illusion.
1.2. He urges his readers not to believe that these writing conventions are real.
1.3. He determined not to confine himself to any man’s rules.
1.4. Sterne’s aim was to give a true picture as possible of real human beings.
1.5. He must try to devise novel techniques and conventions to convey the illusion of simultaneity.


2. Sterne’s Structure & Characterisation:

2.1. Tristram Shandy gives the impression of being haphazardly constructed but in fact it is built according to a very deliberate plan.
2.2. Writers after Sterne followed his path in writing.
2.3. The analyses of characters such as Walter Shandy, Uncle Toby, and the rest come to illustrate the character and opinions of Tristram who, as autobiographer, is himself one of the novel’s characters.


3. Digressions:

3.1. Tristram Shandy includes numerous “digressions” and varied characters, incidents and its dates too. (Aunt Dinah’s lapse with the coachman in 1699 and the imprisonment of Trim’s brother by the inquisition in 1704).
3.2. Sterne is a careful and deliberate writer who constantly worked over his manuscripts until they satisfied him.
3.3. The naturalness of the chronological dating is impressive and times are slipped in the course of other matters.
3.4. Sterne neglects chronological order as he moves backward and forward in time.
3.5. He can create suspense by breaking off at some crucial moments and switching over to some other incidents.
3.6. According to Sterne, the general effect of novel must be the general effect that life makes on mankind.
3.7. Sterne commends himself as “a master-stroke of digressive skill” (Vol. I, Ch. 22)

4. Psychological Time:

4.1. Sterne is concerned with discrepancy between durations in terms of chronological and psychological time.
4.2. His true duration was measured by values not by the clock, according to the characters themselves and their thinking and feeling.
4.3. He played on several different kinds of time that operate in the novel… “It is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle Toby rang the bill, when Obadiah was ordered to saddle a horse…”
4.4. He is also concerned with the distinction between chronological and psychological duration not only as it affects the reader but also as experienced by the characters and their sense of the passage of time. For example he said, “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.”
4.5. Psychological durations allow Sterne to vary his tempo by the clock, he can at will convey a sense of urgency and hurry or of relaxation and suspense.
4.6. The episodes in the novel fall into two main categories: those incidents that are liked together by the association of ideas in the minds of the characters and those linked in Tristram’s mind.