The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne. 2. Impressions of Volumes Three and Four.

CONCEPT

Laurence Sterne

Third Impression: The stories progresses by means of its themes. This progression is very consistant, and since it is derived in all cases from either Walter or Toby's hobby-horses (part of their importance in the novel overall) it provides a context and necessity for their continued conversation. They are, effectively, the two main characters of the book (at least through chapter four).

Fourth Impression: The "subject" then, of the book, is the adventure of analytic examination, or rather, the act of analysis not in terms of establish conventions, but as the negotion of ambiguity, miscommunication, and misinformation.

Fifth Impression: Given the last two observations, the digressions (and mode of their presentation - ie. sermons, tales, narrative didacticism, etc.) are not far flung at all. At this point they have, without any exception that comes readily to mind, exhibited the extraordinary results of "conventional" logic as manifested in Walter and Toby's hobby-horses, unnegotiable contradictions (Slawkenbergius' tale), and eveen commonplace coincidences throughout (Obadiah's collision with Dr. Slop, the mischristening of Tristram), and Tristram's meditations of chapters, stairs, button-holes, and so on. If this is understood as the defining structural element of the novel, then it becomes coservative in layour.

Sixth Impression: Near the end of Volume IV, Tristram unambiguously states that the purpose of the novel is to incite anything, it is laughter (that is, if it is directed against anything, it is the spleen. The ongoing bawdy references, caricatural behavior of the characters, and some of the subject matter treated at length ("noses" and pretend fortification) strongly supports this. However, while the treatment of religion in particular, but also physiology, is treated as humorously as anything else, the detail of the arguments seem to suggest a serious commentary, or at least establishing the parameters of a serious discussion.

My questions moving in to the second half of the novel, then, are as follows:

Question: What am I intended to take seriously?

Question: To what extent does Sterne intend us to read Tristram's stated opinions as analgous to Sterne's own?

Question: Was this novel outlined before/as it was written?

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