Work record
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
1759-1767 · 18th Century · Novel · English
Abstract
Background. A little-known Yorkshire vicar issued the opening pair of volumes at his own expense and became the toast of London within weeks. He extended the story in installments until a year before his death from consumption. Locke on the mind, Cervantes and Rabelais on comedy, and Burton's anatomy of melancholy supplied much of his learning and many of his jokes.
Plot. The narrator traces his misfortunes to a question about a clock asked at the moment he was begotten, then to a crushed nose at birth, a botched baptism and a falling sash. Around these accidents revolve his father's learned schemes, his uncle's mock campaigns with Trim, a lieutenant's death, a journey through France and an uncle's halting courtship.
Form. Chronology is shuffled on purpose: the preface turns up in Volume III, chapters are skipped or left empty, and pages are printed black, marbled or blank. Wavy diagrams chart the narrative's own wanderings.
Themes. Ruling passions and the failure of systems, Lockean psychology, the gap between words and meaning, kindness as the real wisdom, and the race between a writer and his own mortality.
Significance. Admired by Goethe and Nietzsche and claimed by twentieth-century experimental writers, it is often treated as the great anti-novel of the eighteenth century, appearing barely a generation after the English novel took shape.
Main characters
- Tristram Shandy: Digressive narrator trying to set down his own history
- Walter Shandy: His father, a theorist of noses, names and education
- Uncle Toby: Kindly old soldier absorbed in the science of sieges
- Corporal Trim: Toby's devoted servant and fellow builder of earthworks
- Mrs. Shandy: Tristram's literal-minded mother
- Yorick: Witty country parson
- Dr. Slop: Man-midwife with forceps
- Widow Wadman: Neighbor who courts Toby
Summary
Tristram Shandy promises to tell the life and opinions of its narrator, a Yorkshire gentleman, and spends most of its nine volumes failing to reach his life at all. Tristram begins with the moment of his conception in March 1718, when his mother interrupts his father at the critical instant to ask whether he has remembered to wind up the clock. That interruption, he says, scattered the animal spirits that should have escorted the homunculus, and it explains the misfortunes of his whole existence. The household at Shandy Hall supplies the comedy. Walter Shandy, Tristram's father, is a retired Turkey merchant who loves systems: he believes that the shape of the nose and the choice of a Christian name govern a man's fortunes, and that a gentle birth protects the brain. His brother, Captain Toby Shandy, was wounded in the groin at the siege of Namur in 1695; to explain his wound he builds, with his loyal servant Corporal Trim, a scale model of fortifications on the bowling green and refights the campaigns of Queen Anne's wars. Each man rides his hobby-horse, Tristram's word for a ruling passion. Mrs. Shandy, placid and literal, rarely understands either of them. Parson Yorick, a plain-spoken clergyman, dies early in the book, and his death is marked by a page printed entirely black. Tristram is not born until the third and fourth volumes. Dr. Slop, the Catholic man-midwife, is sent for; Obadiah has tied his bag of instruments in knots; and the new forceps crush the infant's nose. When the sickly baby is to be christened Trismegistus, the maid Susannah garbles the name and the curate baptizes him Tristram, the name Walter thinks the worst of all. Further accidents follow: news of the death of Tristram's elder brother Bobby, which Walter answers with a learned oration on death and Trim with a dropped hat; a falling window-sash that injures the five-year-old Tristram; and Walter's Tristrapaedia, an educational system that takes so long to write that the child outgrows it. Along the way come Slawkenbergius's Latin tale of a stranger with an enormous nose, Ernulphus's curse, the deathbed of the poor Lieutenant Le Fever, whose son Toby takes in, a marbled page, a blank page for the reader to draw the Widow Wadman, and diagrams of the book's own crooked plot lines. Volume VII sends Tristram galloping through France to escape Death. The last volumes return to Toby's courtship of the Widow Wadman, which ends when her anxious questions about the site of his wound are understood. The book closes with Walter's complaint about his town bull and Yorick calling the whole thing a cock-and-bull story. Volumes I–II appeared at York in December 1759 and were published in London in January 1760; the rest followed in 1761, 1765 and 1767. The library text is the Project Gutenberg edition, which gathers all nine volumes in four parts.
Virtues in this work
- Charity: Toby and Trim nurse the dying Lieutenant Le Fever at the inn and take responsibility for his orphaned son.
- Friendship: Corporal Trim serves Toby for years as companion and fellow engineer, and the brothers Walter and Toby stay affectionate through every quarrel over their hobby-horses.
- Humility: Toby, the least learned man at Shandy Hall, answers Walter's lectures with modesty and a whistled Lillabullero rather than pride.
Plot or Argument
- Volume I: The clock and the hobby-horses
Tristram recounts his conception, interrupted by his mother's question about the clock, and the marriage settlement that forced his lying-in to take place at Shandy Hall. He introduces the hobby-horse, the midwife, Parson Yorick and his death beneath the inscription to poor Yorick, and promises to explain Uncle Toby's character before breaking off for digressions on digression itself.
- Volume II: Toby's wound and the sermon
Toby's wound at Namur and his study of fortification are explained; he releases a fly through the window rather than hurt it. Dr. Slop arrives in the mud, and Trim reads aloud a sermon on conscience that turns out to be Yorick's.
- Volume III: Knots, curses and noses
Slop cuts his finger untying Obadiah's knots and is given Ernulphus's form of excommunication to curse by. Walter expounds the importance of noses, and Tristram is delivered with his nose crushed by the forceps. The marbled page appears here.
- Volume IV: Slawkenbergius and the christening
The book opens with Slawkenbergius's tale of the long-nosed stranger at Strasbourg. Upstairs, the misheard name Trismegistus becomes Tristram at the font, and the learned men at the Visitation dinner debate whether a mother is of kin to her child.
- Volume V: Bobby's death and the Tristrapaedia
News of Bobby's death prompts Walter's oration of classical consolations and Trim's homely eloquence in the kitchen. The window-sash falls on the boy Tristram, and Walter turns to writing a system of education for his son.
- Volume VI: Le Fever and the breeches
Toby and Trim nurse the dying Lieutenant Le Fever and adopt his son. The family debates putting Tristram into breeches, the Widow Wadman is introduced with a blank page, and Tristram draws the crooked lines of his story so far.
- Volume VII: Flight from Death
Tristram, now an adult and ill, flees Death across France, from Calais through Paris to Lyons and the south, mixing a travel book with a satire of travel books.
- Volumes VIII–IX: The amours of Uncle Toby
Toby's courtship of the Widow Wadman, prepared with Trim's help, ends when he grasps that her interest is in his wound. Tristram meets the distracted Maria near Moulines, addresses his dear Jenny on the shortness of time, and closes with Walter's bull and Yorick's verdict.
Characters
- Tristram Shandy, narrator
Yorkshire gentleman who sets out to write his life and opinions and digresses endlessly; his conception, birth and childhood accidents fill most of the book.
- Walter Shandy, father
Retired Turkey merchant devoted to learned hypotheses about noses, names, birth and education, all of which misfire upon his son.
- Captain Toby Shandy, uncle
Gentle, modest veteran wounded at Namur whose hobby-horse is the science of fortification; one of the most loved characters in English fiction.
- Corporal Trim, Toby's servant
Former soldier, devoted to his master, who builds the bowling-green fortifications and reads Yorick's sermon aloud.
- Elizabeth Shandy, mother
Tristram's mother, calm and literal, whose question about the clock opens the book.
- Parson Yorick, clergyman
Plain-spoken, witty parson whose jests make him enemies; Sterne used the name for his own published sermons.
- Dr. Slop, man-midwife
Squat Catholic physician whose forceps injure the infant Tristram's nose.
- Susannah, maid
Mrs. Shandy's maid, who garbles the name Trismegistus on the way to the curate.
- Obadiah, servant
Walter's man, who ties Dr. Slop's instrument bag in tight knots.
- Widow Wadman, neighbor
Widow who sets her cap at Uncle Toby and wants to know exactly where he was wounded.
- Lieutenant Le Fever, dying officer
Poor soldier who falls ill at the village inn; Toby and Trim care for him and adopt his son.
Lessons
Hobby-horses and the people who ride them
Walter's systems and Toby's fortifications make both brothers absurd, yet Tristram treats a man's hobby-horse with indulgence so long as he does not force others to ride it. The book asks readers to laugh at ruling passions while loving the people who have them.
- What are Walter's and Toby's hobby-horses, and how does each one shape the way they misunderstand each other?
- Why does Tristram say it is no business of ours what another man rides, so long as he keeps to the highway?
- When does a harmless enthusiasm become a fault?
The comedy of theory
Walter Shandy has a learned theory for everything: noses, names, the seat of the soul, auxiliary verbs and childbirth. Every one of them is defeated by an accident, a knot, a falling sash or a maid's memory. Sterne mocks the learned pedant who prefers a system to the child in front of him.
- Which of Walter's theories is most clearly defeated by events, and how?
- Why does the Tristrapaedia fail to educate Tristram?
- Is Sterne mocking learning itself, or only learning cut off from life?
Kindness as the measure of a man
Uncle Toby, the book's least learned man, is its best. He frees the fly, cares for Le Fever, and swears that the dying man shall not die; Tristram's narration makes his goodness the warm center of the comedy.
- What does the episode of the fly tell us about Toby?
- How do Toby and Trim care for Le Fever and his son?
- Why does the Recording Angel blot out Toby's oath?
Writing against time
Tristram notices that he has taken a year to write one day of his life, so that he can never catch up with himself. The digressions, blank and black pages and the flight from Death in Volume VII turn the book into a meditation on how memory and storytelling struggle with mortality.
- Why can Tristram never finish his life?
- What does the flight across France in Volume VII suggest about Tristram and death?
- How does the address to Jenny in Volume IX change the tone of the comedy?
Context
Sterne wrote in the generation after Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), whose account of the association of ideas and of duration he openly borrows, and alongside the first great English novels of Richardson and Fielding. He drew on a tradition of learned comedy running from Rabelais and Cervantes through Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and Swift's Tale of a Tub. Toby's campaigns recall the wars of William III and Queen Anne in the Low Countries, still within living memory for Sterne's first readers.
Composition
Sterne, then an obscure Yorkshire parson, had the first two volumes printed at York at his own risk; they appeared in December 1759 and were published in London by Robert Dodsley in January 1760. Volumes III–IV followed in January 1761, V–VI in December 1761 (dated 1762), VII–VIII in January 1765, and IX in January 1767. Sterne wrote the later volumes in poor health and after travels in France that supplied Volume VII.
Reception
The book was an immediate sensation in London, and Sterne was received in fashionable society. Some readers objected to a clergyman writing so freely, and Samuel Johnson remarked that nothing odd will do long. Later readers, from German Romantics to modernist novelists, prized its play with time, typography and the reader; Russian formalist critics called it among the most typical novels in world literature. Scholars continue to debate whether Sterne left the novel unfinished or ended it by design with Volume IX.
Comparisons
- don-quixote
Sterne repeatedly invokes Cervantes; Toby and Trim with their miniature sieges recall the knight and his squire, and the hobby-horse is a gentle English cousin of Quixote's chivalric madness.
- rabelais-gargantua-and-pantagruel
Rabelais is Sterne's model for learned bawdy comedy, mock scholarship and lists; Slawkenbergius's tale and the Visitation dinner of doctors are Rabelaisian set pieces.
- an-essay-concerning-human-understanding
The book's first chapters turn Locke's association of ideas into a comic principle, and Walter's lecture on duration in Volume III borrows Locke's account of the succession of ideas.
- fielding-tom-jones
Published a decade apart, Tom Jones displays the carefully built plot of the early English novel while Tristram Shandy takes that structure apart from the inside.
- gullivers-travels
Swift's satire on projectors and learned men in the voyage to Laputa parallels Walter's systems; Sterne names Swift's Tale of a Tub among the books he hopes to outlast.
Quotes
Frequently cited
“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;——they are the life, the soul of reading!”
Frequently cited
“This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.”
Frequently cited
“The ACCUSING SPIRIT, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL, as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
“so long as a man rides his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?”
“from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection in nature”
“WRITING, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.”
“Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- The clock in Vol. I, Ch. 1 and the association of ideas that follows from it.
- Uncle Toby and the fly in Vol. II, Ch. 12, and his care for Le Fever in Vol. VI.
- The black page after Yorick's death, the marbled page in Vol. III and the blank page for the Widow Wadman in Vol. VI.
- Every time one of Walter's systems collides with an accident: the knots, the forceps, the christening, the window-sash.
- Tristram's complaint that he can never catch up with his own life, and his address to Jenny in Vol. IX.
Key terms and names
- Hobby-horse
- Tristram's word for a person's ruling enthusiasm, like Toby's fortifications or Walter's hypotheses; harmless if ridden peaceably.
- Association of ideas
- Locke's term for the habit of linking ideas that have no natural connection, which Tristram uses to explain his mother's thoughts about the clock.
- Man-midwife
- An eighteenth-century physician who attended births, often with instruments; Dr. Slop is the Shandys' man-midwife.
- Tristrapaedia
- Walter's system of education for his son, which takes him so long to write that it becomes useless.
- Namur
- Town in the Low Countries besieged in 1695, where Toby received his wound.
- Shandean
- Adjective from the family name, used by Sterne's readers for anything whimsical, digressive and odd in the manner of the book.
- Content note
- Recommended for upper high school with guidance: the book is full of sexual innuendo and double meanings, especially about noses and Toby's wound, though nothing is described explicitly.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension What question does Mrs. Shandy ask in the first chapter, and why does Tristram blame it for his misfortunes?
- Comprehension How was Uncle Toby wounded, and why does he build fortifications on the bowling green?
- Comprehension How does the infant come to be named Tristram instead of Trismegistus?
- Interpretation Why does Tristram claim that his digressions are the life of reading, and are they?
- Interpretation Why do Walter and Toby love each other although neither understands the other's hobby-horse?
- Interpretation Why does Sterne place Yorick's death, Bobby's death and Le Fever's death inside a comic book?
- Big Question Can a life ever be fully told, and what does Tristram's failure suggest about memory and time?
- Big Question Is it wiser to live by a system or by kindness, if one must choose?
Faith Connections
- Hebrews 13:18 (Scripture)
The text of the sermon on conscience that Trim reads aloud in Vol. II, Ch. 17; Sterne had preached it at York Minster and later printed it among The Sermons of Mr. Yorick.
- Psalm 90:12 (Scripture)
Teach us to number our days: Tristram's address to Jenny in Vol. IX, Ch. 8 turns the comedy of writing toward the brevity of life.
- Luke 10:30-37 (Scripture)
Toby and Trim's care for the poor lieutenant Le Fever, a stranger at the inn, follows the pattern of the Good Samaritan.
- Ecclesiastes 12:12 and Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (Great Conversation)
The Preacher's warning about the endless making of books and Erasmus's Christian satire of learned folly both stand behind Sterne's mockery of Walter's library-bound wisdom.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: If every human being is ruled by some hobby-horse and every learned system is defeated by chance, then the measure of a person is not the soundness of his theories but the kindness he shows; Walter's failed systems and Toby's simple goodness make the case.
Rhetorical device: apostrophe. Tristram constantly turns to address Madam, Sir, your worships and, in Vol. IX, Ch. 8, his dear Jenny, as in the line about time wasting too fast.
Debate: Resolved: that Tristram Shandy is a complete novel rather than an unfinished one.
Memory Work
This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.
The ACCUSING SPIRIT, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL, as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.
Writing Prompts
Essay: Argue whether Uncle Toby or Walter Shandy is the true hero of the book, using the fly, the Le Fever episode and Walter's response to Bobby's death.
Comparison with Don Quixote: Compare Uncle Toby's fortifications with Don Quixote's chivalry: how does each author make a gentle obsession both ridiculous and admirable?
Medical Lens
Tristram Shandy is a valuable document of mid-eighteenth-century obstetrics. The rivalry between the village midwife and Dr. Slop, a man-midwife armed with the new forceps, reflects the real contest over who should attend births; Slop is generally taken as a caricature of the York physician and obstetric writer John Burton, with whom Sterne had local quarrels, though the identification rests on tradition and circumstantial evidence. Walter's theories draw on older physiology: animal spirits, the homunculus, the seat of the soul and the danger of pressure on the infant's head during birth, which he hopes to avoid by a Caesarean delivery. Toby's groin wound from Namur and his years of convalescence connect the comedy to the care of wounded soldiers. The hobby-horse is a pre-clinical study of fixed ideas, and the opening chapters adapt Locke's association of ideas, an important source for later associationist psychology. Sterne himself had consumption and suffered lung haemorrhages; Volume VII, with its flight from Death and Tristram's cough, is often read in that light. Such biographical readings are interpretive.
- Vol. I, Chs. 1–4
The interrupted conception, the scattering of the animal spirits, and the association of ideas between the clock and the marriage bed.
- Vol. I, Chs. 7, 13 and 18
The village midwife, the marriage settlement and Walter's insistence on sending for a man-midwife.
- Vol. II, Chs. 1–5
Toby's groin wound at Namur, his long recovery, and his turn to the study of fortification to explain where he was hurt.
- Vol. III, Chs. 8–16, and Vol. IV, Ch. 27
Dr. Slop's knotted bag of instruments, the newly invented forceps, and the injury to the infant's nose.
- Vol. VI, Chs. 6–10
Toby and Trim's care of the dying Lieutenant Le Fever at the inn.
- Vol. VII, Ch. 1
Tristram, coughing and ill, resolves to flee from Death across France.
Creative Prompts
- Essay
Trace one of Walter Shandy's theories (noses, names or birth) from his first statement of it to its defeat by events, and explain what Sterne is satirizing.
- Fiction
Write a short chapter of your own life in Tristram's manner, beginning on the right day and digressing at least three times before reaching it.
- Classroom
Display the black page, the marbled page and the plot-line diagrams of Vol. VI, Ch. 40, and discuss what each does that words cannot.
Further Reading
- A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, Laurence Sterne
Sterne's 1768 travel narrative, with Yorick as narrator, which revisits Maria of Moulines.
- The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton
Burton's encyclopedic treatise on melancholy, one of Sterne's main sources of learned borrowing.
- Laurence Sterne: The Early and Middle Years, Arthur H. Cash
First volume of the standard modern biography.
- Laurence Sterne: The Later Years, Arthur H. Cash
Second volume, covering the later volumes of Tristram Shandy and Sterne's death.
Verification notes
Full text is Project Gutenberg #1079, complete, printed in four parts headed Volume the First to Fourth, which gather Sterne's nine original volumes; chapter numbers in that file run continuously within each part. Locators here follow Sterne's original nine volumes (for example Vol. II, Ch. 11 appears in the Gutenberg file as Chap. XXXVI of the first part). All seven quotes were found by search in the stored text and keep its spelling, capitals and dashes. Publication dates of the installments are standard. The identification of Dr. Slop with John Burton is traditional and widely repeated. Johnson's remark that nothing odd will do long is reported by Boswell and is paraphrased here, not quoted.
- Confirm the original-volume chapter numbers given for medical lens passages against a critical edition (Florida edition).
- Confirm the publication month for Volumes V–VI (December 1761, title page 1762).