Exercises 3

1.  Perhaps the most obvious first question has to do with the peculiar typographical and physical characteristics of Sterne's novel, with its dashes and exclamation marks, its changes in type, its black page and marbled page and blank page where we are to fill in a description of our mistress. What do you make of all this?  What are the specific explanations of typographical unconventionalities?  Is there a general explanation?  Does Sterne's manipulation of print contribute to or extend the meaning of the novel?  What attitudes does it suggest about printing and the relationship of the novel to print?

2. Tristram refers to Locke rather significantly in the novel, and especially to notions of the subjective nature of time, the association of ideas, and the unstable nature of words.  What are the uses he makes of Locke?  What Lockean implications does his novel trace?  Is Tristram Shandy a celebration of Locke's views or a parody of them?  (Though the last question presupposes substantial familiarity with Locke, readers unfamiliar with Locke might still pay attention to the occasions on which Locke is mentioned and the kinds of ideas Tristram wants to associate with Locke.)

3. Certainly Tristram Shandy contains substantial parody of learning, as characteristics both of "my father" and of Tristram himself.  (Tristram is in many respects the product of the Tristrapaedia.)  What purposes does such parody serve?  What is its relationship to the exposition of character? And what do you make of the fact that Tristram is both the product and the manipulator of such parody?

4. Tristram seems to fragment himself into different images of the author--as the person writing the book, as a figure in the book, as an individual with clear traits of both his father and his uncle, and even as the independent character of Yorick.  What do you make of this peculiarly fragmented self-presentation?  Does the novel add up to nothing more than Tristram's endless views of himself?  If so, what implications does this self-reflection have for the possibilities of meaning?  Or, if the novel is not simply (or complexly) about Tristram, what is it about?

5. In addition to all of the characters of the past, Tristram the author has various friends in the present--Eugenius and Jenny in particular.  What is their role in the novel?  In fact, all of Volume VII takes place in the present.  What is the relationship between the novel's present and its past?

6. In fact, the present time is emphasized to such a degree that one of the major subjects of the novel seems to be the writing of the novel.  But Tristram asserts that the writing of an autobiography can never be completed.  Is this a "loop" which Tristram has become caught in by accident?  Is it a comic game, a whimsical entertainment?  Or does it have deeper implications about both life and authorship?

7. Writing, Tristram tells us, is a kind of conversation in which we readers play an important part.  What instructions does he give us for doing so?  And what is the relationship between us "real" readers and the various fictional one (such as "Madame" of I,xx) to whom Tristram refers?  How do we know when to take his instructions seriously?

8. Some of these instructions are never articulated, and one seems to be that any language that can even remotely be construed as dirty ought to be read that way (though in doing so, we reveal our own dirty minds, as distinct from the "innocent" mind of Tristram).  Tristram keeps insisting that his intentions are pure and that his readers' understandings are corrupt.  Two questions obviously follow:  (a) what is the function of naughtiness in the novel, and (b) what is the relationship between Tristram's secret instructions and his overt denial?

9. Tristram Shandy is a supreme instance of comedy, both in what it tells and how it tells it.  Tristram himself refers to the novel as a "bagatelle."  He discusses even the physical uses of Shandyism.  (Is there a distinction between Shandyism and comedy?)  What concepts of comedy underlie the novel?  What is the relationship between the novel's comedy and its various themes (whatever they are)?

10. Many of Tristram's characters are incomplete or distorted, defined, in any event, by their hobbyhorses.  What does Tristram mean by "hobbyhorses"?  Is it a mock theory or a serious idea that governs his treatment of characters?  Does Tristram have a theory of characterization or psychology?  What is the relationship between characterization in the novel and the author's view of the nature of human nature?