Metafictional devices and intertextuality in Tristram Shandy

Lawrence Sternes most famous novel, entitled The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a preposterously comic
literary creation, is representative for the category of the realistic novel, the predominant form of literature in the
18th century, which centres, as a major feature, on the relationship between the individual and the social
environment, reflecting the tensions and conflicts between private and individual convictions and ideas, and public
and social norms and conventions.
Tristram Shandy can be considered a non-conventional novel in what concerns various aspects, such as
outlook, language, structure, narrative strategies and the treatment of identity.
The entire structure of the novel folds on the principle of the spontaneous association of ideas, expressed by
John Locke, and explained by the main character himself in the beginning of the novel, in contrast to the illusion of
linguistic transparency postulated by the traditional literary works. Sternes novel was often called anti-novel, since
its substance derives from the fusion of traditional elements and new techniques. A profound understanding of the
inner logic of the plot requires the adjustment of the reading strategy, in order to follow the stream of consciousness,
regarding the fact that Tristram is concerned with rendering everything crossing his mind while setting out to tell the
story of his life, anticipating, for example, Virginia Woolfs later characters.
The theme of metafiction, although a frequent feature of postmodernist literature, is central to Sternes
novel, a fact which defines him as a profoundly original author. Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which
self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the
relationship between fiction and reality. In providing a critique of their own methods of construction, such writings
not only examine the fundamental structures of narrative fiction, they also explore the possible fictionality of the
world outside the literary fictional text.
Wayne C. Booth has shown, in one of his studies, that the novel Tristram Shandy makes an attempt at self-
conscious narration with a comically intrusive writer preoccupied by the problems of writing.
The novel begins with Tristrams conception about the way in which a child ought to be begotten and
continues with an innocent remark of Tristrams mother about winding up the clock, which upsets the narrators
father, Walter, and determines him to lose his concentration, with a discussion on the signification of the
Homolunculus, which, in turn, embroils the narrator in a discussion of his parents marriage contract, his uncle Toby,
Parson Yorick, the midwife and Dr. Slop, all of whom contribute, in one way or another, to the development of the
protagonists life. The first chapter, in fact, alerts the reader about almost all the concerns of the narrator, and it does
so with a technical audacity that matches its subject matter.
Tristram Shandy is, at the same time, an autobiography and a novel about writing a novel. The conception
of Tristram is the conception of the book, and by mentioning the creation of the world and the myth of Adam,
Tristram indeed confronts us with the creation of a world: the creation of Tristram leads to the creation by Tristram of
the world of Tristram Shandy.
Sternes greatness is not simply that he wrote a novel about writing a novel; his triumph is due to the fact
that, unlike most of his imitators, he gave as much of his genius to his invented world as to the theme of inventing it.
Tristram Shandy is, in fact, in the depths of its metafictional scheme, the Trista-paedia itself, whose every thread,
according to the narrator, is drawn out of Tristrams father own brain. By means of metafiction, Sternes attempt was
to create a textual web which, in catching the consciousness of the characters, would at the same time express the
consciousness of their creator.
Therefore, the technique of the stream of consciousness represents one of the major metafictional devices
used in Tristram Shandy. The narrator is fascinated by the fluctuating and undulating impulses of thought and
feeling. The novel embodies endless series of digressions from the hard nucleus of the novel (represented by the
protagonists intention of assembling his autobiography), introduced by means of relating other stories,
conversations, explanations. This is why Tristram Shandy is full of incidents or images which relate, at one and the
same time, to the characters and to the novel itself. For instance, when Dr Slops obstetrical bag has been trussed
with a dozen knots so that it wont rattle, and then poor Dr Slop has to wrestle hurriedly with them, because the
baby is being born, the reader is aware not only of Dr Slop, but of the fact that Tristram has created, as part of the
novel, exactly this multiplicity of round-abouts and intricate cross turns. The incident within the novel, for Dr Slop,
acts just as it does in the novel, but this time for the reader; such incidents can be metaphorically called, from the
point of view of metafiction, wheels-within-wheels, conferring to the plot a sense if dizzying but comic speed.
Sternes writing demands a different mode of annotation, one arising from its often masked embeddedness in a
literary past, the literary existence of its narrator, Tristrams primary occupation as an adult to write a book, and its
digressive texture, so often consisting of borrowed documents and pseudo-documents, counter-narratives and
parodies.
Another metafictional device is the mysterious appearance, from time to time, of an editor of the book,
whose footnotes correct Tristram, but, in fact, have no certain meaning.
Time also constitutes one of the devices used in order to articulate the metafictional scheme of the novel. It
is both a subject Tristram and the other characters speculate about and a metafictional mirror which reflects two
kinds of perspective made iridescent by the readers: the first one is represented by the literal time of the reader,
measurable by the clock, and the second one is the reader's sense of how much (fictional) time has elapsed in the
lives of the characters; in the fictional time, the characters have performed actions requiring more than the mere
minutes of the reader's real time. For example, Tristram notes that it has taken the reader about ninety minutes to
read what happened since uncle Toby rang the bell and Obadiah left for Dr. Slop. The narrator asserts that, poetically
speaking, he has allowed Obadiah time enough both to come and go. Tristram goes onto acknowledge that no real or
chronological time may have elapsed: truly speaking, the character scarcely had time to get on his boots. Tristram
then addresses a literal-minded reader, whose objections he sets forth, in order to demolish their irrelevance to
fictional time.
Other time, Tristram refers to the time in which he is writing the novel, placing us in the room where he is
writing, telling us about the weather as he writes, describing his activities or what he is wearing as he writes, as
particular thoughts which he has just written down come to him, this very rainy day, March 26, 1759, and between
the hours of nine and ten in the morning". The year is, of course, the actual time when Sterne was writing this
volume. Or, the narrator tells us, "And here am I sitting, this 12th day of August, 1766, in a purple jerkin and yellow
pair of slippers, without either wig or cap on. Such intrusions of the narrator's time calls attention to the artificiality
of the novel and the fictionality of his characters, who yet are convincingly alive for the reader. They also raise the
question of the relationship of the actual writer (not the fictional persona) to his novel.
Intertextuality represents the theory that a literary work is not simply the product of a single author, but of
its relationship to other texts and to the structures of language itself. Laurence Sterne is an author who gets above
himself, from the point of using intertextuality, also, since he manages to create his own literary canon.
Sterne's text is filled with allusions and references to the leading thinkers and writers of the 17th and 18th
centuries. Pope, Locke, and Swift were all major influences on Sterne and Tristram Shandy. There are, for instance, all
the hitherto unpublished books which Tristram keeps mentioning: his fathers life of Socrates, or his system of
education for his son Tristram, the Tristra-paedia (rivalling Xenophons Cyropaedia, the training of Cyrus the
Great). The authors he does frequently cite as his forebears come from another tradition, and Sterne invokes that
tradition often enough to put the notion that he was writing a novel or even writing against the novel into some
question, assuming that we mean something more than a long work in prose when we use the generic term.
Sternes major sources, Rabelais, Montaigne, Burton, Cervantes and Swift, when taken together, reflect a tradition of
prose writing labelled satire. In Tristram Shandy, as in Don Quixote, satire and comedy often march hand in
hand.
Sterne consistently singles out Swift among his English-writing predecessors; and when he decided to include
a sermon in Volume II, it is important to recognize that he chose one in which significant portions are borrowed from
a very similar sermon on the subject of conscience by Swift.
It's easy to see that the satires of Pope and Swift formed much of the humor of Tristram Shandy, but Swift's
sermons and Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding contributed ideas and frameworks that Sterne
explored throughout his novel. Sterne's engagement with the science and philosophy of his day was extensive,
however, and the sections on obstetrics and fortifications, for instance, indicate that he had a grasp of the main
issues then current in those fields.
There are two influences on Tristram Shandy that overshadow all others: Rabelais and Cervantes. The first
scene in Tristram Shandy, where Tristram's mother interrupts Tristram's conception, testifies to Sterne's debt to
Rabelais. The shade of Cervantes is similarly present throughout Sterne's novel. The frequent references to
Rosinante, the character of Uncle Toby (who resembles Don Quixote in many ways) and Sterne's own description of
his characters' 'Cervantic humour', along with the genre defying structure of Tristram Shandy, which owes much to
the second part of Cervantes novel, all demonstrate the influence of Cervantes.