The multilayered narrative structure of Tristram Shandy emphasizes literature’s ability to transport the reader across time and space, even as it casts doubt of the truthfulness of such travels. The novel suggests that this narrative form of “travel” is in a sense no more unreal than physical travel itself. Put differently, literature can describe travel—and lived reality in general—in ways that ring truer to life than any objective, straightforward narrative. Through its use of creative techniques to describe Tristram’s travels, and in particular the ways Tristram’s narration style plays with time and space, the novel demonstrates the malleable, subjective experience of time, as well as fiction’s unique ability to capture that experience in ways that ring true to life.
Throughout Volume Seven, as Tristram travels through France to flee Death, he mockingly compares his narrative to travelogues. Indeed, much of this volume is a kind of anti-travelogue, mocking the genre and its deficiencies and exposing how similar travelogues are to novels—they are, Sterne argues, no “truer” or more objective than any other mode of writing. This is made explicit when Tristram arrives in Calais. Though he admits to having seen very little of the town, he is nevertheless confident that he could write a convincing travelogue about it, which he does in the highly sarcastic subsequent chapter. In this way, then, the novel suggests that narrative accounts that purport to describe the world as it really is—in this case, the travelogue—are often misleading. It’s Tristram’s ability to write creatively and convincingly about his supposed experiences in Calais, in other words, that lends his travelogue an air of truth—not the experiences he actually had there.
Tristram Shandy’s pacing also exemplifies the subjective experience of time. The hurried, frenetic quality of Tristram’s autobiography, though atypical of the genre, captures the anxiety and apprehension a person feels as they get on in their years and feel as though their life slipping away from them. Especially once Tristram flees to France to escape personified Death, for instance, the narrative style becomes faster and more harried. The inventive liberties Sterne’s narrative takes in its manipulation of and space not only celebrate the joys of travel and other experiences, but they also show how the human mind’s subjective experience of time and space allows people to extract meaning from the world.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Travel, Space, and Time ThemeTracker
Travel, Space, and Time Quotes in Tristram Shandy
If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell and the rap at the door;—and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three fifths,----should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability, of time;—I would remind him, that the idea of duration and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas,---and is the true scholastick pendulum,----and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in this matter,----abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.
Is it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in going down one pair of stairs? for we are got no farther yet than to the first landing, and there are fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for aught I know, as my father and my uncle Toby are in a talking humour, there may be as many chapters as steps;—let that be as it will, Sir, I can no more help it than my destiny:—A sudden impulse comes across me—drop the curtain, Shandy—I drop it—Strike a line here across the paper, Tristram—I strike it—and hey for a new chapter!
Now the chapter I was obliged to tear out, was the description of this cavalcade, in which corporal Trim and Obadiah, upon two coach-horses a-breast, led the way as slow as a patrole—whilst my uncle Toby, in his laced regimentals and tye-wig, kept his rank with my father, in deep roads and dissertations alternately upon the advantage of learning and arms, as each could get the start.
—But the painting of this journey, upon reviewing it, appears to be so much above the stile and manner of any thing else I have been able to paint in this book, that it could not have remained in it, without depreciating every other scene; and destroying at the same time that necessary equipoise and balance, (whether good or bad) betwixt chapter and chapter, from whence the just proportions and harmony of the whole work results. For my own part, I am but just set up in the business, so know little about it—but, in my opinion, to write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, ’tis no matter how high or how low you take it.—
—In cases like this, corporal, said my uncle Toby, slipping his right hand down to the middle of his cane, and holding it afterwards truncheon-wise, with his forefinger extended,—’tis no part of the consideration of a commandant, what the enemy dare,—or what they dare not do; he must act with prudence. We will begin with the outworks both towards the sea and the land, and particularly with fort Louis, the most distant of them all, and demolish it first,—and the rest, one by one, both on our right and left, as we retreat towards the town;—then we’ll demolish the mole,—next fill up the harbour,—then retire into the citadel, and blow it up into the air; and having done that, corporal, we’ll embark for England.—We are there, quoth the corporal, recollecting himself—Very true, said my uncle Toby—looking at the church.
This right line,—the path-way for Christians to walk in! say the divines—
—The emblem of moral rectitude! says Cicero—
—The best line! say cabbage-planters—is the shortest line, says Archimedes, which can be drawn from one given point to another.—
I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart in your next birth-day suits!
—What a journey!
Pray can you tell me,—that is, without anger, before I write my chapter upon straight lines—by what mistake—who told them so—or how it has come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded this line, with the line of Gravitation.
—And pray Mr. commissary, by what law of courtesy is a defenceless stranger to be used just the reverse from what you use a Frenchman in this matter?
By no means; said he.
Excuse me; said I—for you have begun, sir, with first tearing off my breeches—and now you want my pocket—
Whereas—had you first take my pocket, as you do with your own people—and then left me bare a—’d after—I had been a beast to have complain’d—
As it is—
—’Tis contrary to the law of nature.
—’Tis contrary to reason.
—’Tis contrary to the GOSPEL.
But not to this—said he—putting a printed paper into my hand.
PAR LE ROY.
