Throughout Tristram Shandy, Sterne foregrounds the tension between truth and fiction. This dynamic, the novel seems to suggest, is a perennial problem for all narratives, regardless of their form or content. It is also, paradoxically, what makes a narrative so compelling. Sterne weaves the tension between truth and fiction in storytelling into the genetic code of his novel, as the narrator Tristram is at once an alter ego of Sterne’s and a distinct character of his own. Tristram’s biography draws heavily on Sterne’s: they come from the same countryside near York and have similar lower upper-class social backgrounds, literary careers, and personal lives marked by poor health and frequent recuperative travels to southern Europe. Fragments of Sterne’s authorial persona are hardly unique to Tristram, however. The local parson, Yorick, is another mirror-image of the author, and Sterne copies his own sermons directly into the book and presents them as Yorick’s. The sermon Trim reads to Walter, Toby, and Dr. Slop is one of Sterne’s own, published several years before the first volume of Tristram Shandy.
The problematic relationship of truth to a work of narrative fiction is not found in Tristram Shandy’s borrowings from its author alone: it also gets to the heart of Tristram’s fictional retelling of his own fictional life. How, the reader might ask, can Tristram truthfully narrate so much of his “life and opinions” if they take place before he is even born? Of all nine volumes, only the seventh takes place during Tristram’s adulthood, in which he travels through France with personified Death in close pursuit. The story of Tristram’s conception, gestation, birth, and early childhood, including his accidental circumcision, is completely implausible as a “realistic” story, let alone a “truthful” retelling of his life. Rather, the novel suggests, it is only through inventive telling and retelling—that is, fiction—that an author, speaker, or other kind of storyteller can express the “truth” of any narrative.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Truth, Fiction, and Storytelling ThemeTracker
Truth, Fiction, and Storytelling Quotes in Tristram Shandy
Pray my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?—Good G–! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,—Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?—Nothing.
A man and his Hobby-Horse, tho’ I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of electrified bodies,--and that by means of the heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the Hobby-Horse.—By long journies and much friction, it so happens that the body of the rider is at length fill’d as full of Hobby-Horsical matter as it can hold;----so that if you are able to give but a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character of the other.
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.
“May the Father who created man, curse him.—May the Son who suffered for us, curse him.—May the Holy Ghost who was given to us in baptism, curse him (Obadiah.)—May the holy cross which Christ for our salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended,—curse him
“May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him—May St. Michael the advocate of holy souls, curse.—May all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him.” [Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby,—but nothing to this.—For my own part, I could not have a heart to curse my dog so.]
—And pray who was Tickletoby’s mare?–’tis just as discreditable and unscholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb. con.) the second Punic war broke out.—Who was Tickletoby’s mare!—Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read,—or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon—I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows, I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.
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.—
As Yorick pronounced the word point blank, my uncle Toby rose up to say something upon projectiles—when a single word, and no more, uttered form the opposite side of the table, drew every one’s ears towards it—a word of all others in the dictionary the last in that place to be expected—a word I am ashamed to write—yet must be written—must be read;—illegal—uncanonical—guess ten thousand guesses, multiplied into themselves—rack—torture your invention for ever, you’re where you was—In short, I’ll tell it in the next chapter.
When Agrippina was told of her son’s death, Tacitus informs us, that not being able to moderate the violence of her passions, she abruptly broke off her work—My father stuck his compasses into Nevers, but so much the fast.—What contrarieties! his, indeed, was a matter of calculation—Agrippina’s must have been quite a different affair; who else could pretend to reason from history?
—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.
