Tristram Shandy - Quotes Flashcards
No, I’ll not say a word about it—here it is;—in publishing it—I have appealed to the world—and to the world I leave it;—it must speak for itself.
- “to the world I leave it” the text should exist unmediated by the author - perhaps emphasising the manipulation of the reader and how power should return to them in shaping their reading experience
- author has to surrender the text to his readers
- under obligation to write a preface but undercuts its purpose entirely
Black pages
- prompts readers’ introspection of their own temporal relations to a text with typographical features
- as an inflated full stop - forces the reader to pause, destabilises our control over the narrative
- raises questions of how long do we dwell on them etc.?
- stimulation of the mind with nothingness OR stimulates the mind with itself - we are invited to look into the void of our own mind and left to inwardly contemplate these questions
- by suspending our temporal progression throughout the text he crystallises readers into the same status as the page itself - we take the form of visual artwork who are subjected to inspection
Marble page
- comment on how a book is constructed
- comment on the individuality of a text and the necessity of reimbuing the reading experience with individuality
- possible comment on the disconnect between authors and readers ie. writing for the masses (Grub Street etc.)
- mode that explicitly performs its own transition across contexts ie. reception, each was individually marbled whereas now each text is printed the same
- nostalgic recalling of manual print and thus a rebellion against print culture - subverts the impersonality of print culture
- harnesses the mode of print and redirects its attack inwardly
But before the Corporal begins, I must first give you a description of his attitude;—otherwise he will naturally stand represented, by your imagination, in an uneasy posture,
In a word, you would be apt to paint Trim, as if he was standing in his platoon ready for action,—His attitude was as unlike all this as you can conceive.
- begins to pre-empt our mental constructions of the text
- forces our surrender to Tristram’s corrections of how we have imagined the characters - accusation is that we will warp the narrative
- encapsulates his difficulty in sacrificing the narrative entirely to readers - cannot help but tweak our imaginations
- Anderson: makes us doubt the imaginative faculties that we have thus used - makes it clear that our preconceptions are inadequate for the unusual circumstances that we find ourselves in
ie. we as readers have made logical assumptions whereas Sterne emphasises that reality does not function in this fashion (would be part of reading “straight forwards”)
To conceive this right,—call for pen and ink—here’s paper ready to your hand.—Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind—as like your mistress as you can—as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you—’tis all one to me—please but your own fancy in it.
- implication that the story is unfinished without the reader’s input - truly a co-operative process
- introduces the validity of relativism ie. disrupts the hierarchy of knowledge between author and reader
- challenges our hesitation at the preservation of the text’s integrity
- “paint her” - inviting but also challenging
- “paint” - semantic field of language connected to the visual arts, if we are invited to ‘paint’ this implies that it is also Sterne’s (ie. painting his characters, narrative, and readers as visual art)
- delegates a particular time for his readers’ contributions (“conversation” of the narrative, have to wait for our turn
Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
The truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.
and blank page
- “(as you may be sure…) - slyly boastful
- if we trace TS to postmodern works such as that of Keri Smith then we question whether it would be incomplete without its readerships’ contributory ‘defacement’
- we think of it as ‘defacement’ because we have internalised the rhetoric of there being a ‘correct’ way of reading a book - even with the allowance of relativism the concern remains
- we consider our contributions as a form of low culture, especially visual art which is also considered low culture (a binary that Sterne is challenging)
- part of trying to forge a new kind of intimacy with readers by creating a wholly individual copy of the text
- prints exactly that which supersedes its own capability ie. blank page is the same across time but is the platform for the spontaneity of human creativity
“Pray, what was your father saying? - Nothing”
—But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December, January, and February?—Why, Madam,—he was all that time afflicted with a Sciatica.
- “pray” - momentary hesitation/ contemplation, religious connotations, heightened innocence, inflated shock
- moment of address from Tristram to his fictionalised readers
- we feel Sterne winking at us over the heads of his characters
- as readers, we have unconsciously slipped into the mind of the fictionalised reader
- we gain an objective perspective on the fictionalised reader as we already perceive the implications of the innuendo
The truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.
- we find ourselves the quasi-addressees to shades of what feels more like Sterne’s voice reaching beyond the bounds of the fictionalised relationship between Tristram and his addresses to feel like a direct address to readers themselves
- ironically what Tristram announces is exactly what Sterne is doing - he leaves us questioning our own status in this “conversation” and thus we cannot help but feel implicated
Passages in French
- raises much introspective speculation on our modern relationship to the text
- are we deliberately alienated from the text? should we translate the pages?
- do we deserve access to this knowledge?
- part of his acknowledgement that language can work as a barrier - to then have the blank or black pages is to remove the barrier entirely
- sustained ejection from the text - where Eliot weaves us in and out which creates insecurity and then security, this creates a chasm between reader and author (making comment on the fact that literature should have no grounding in reality and cannot accurately portray reality in the current form that it is taking ie. the novel)
Twisting lines
- recognition that text is the written word, and thus challenges this idea by showing that it can exist beyond the realms of the written word
- shock for both contemporary and modern readers - derived from the context of literature, we are able to connect the text to other literature eg. Hope Mirrlees’ ‘Paris’ (use of song notation in literature)
- we also maintain the generalised myths around literature ie. that the 18th century solely produced literature of conservative styles
“I have had a moment to spare-and I’ll make use of it, and write my preface”
- reduces the impact of the arbitrary literary structures that have been constructed ie. the preface
- afterthought - should be subordinate to the significance of the narrative itself
- questions how do we view its purpose and value?
- it is a rehearsed part of textual structure - occupies an ambiguous position on the periphery of the text
(part of our allegiance to pretension where we ally ourselves to convenient artifice instead of inconvenient reality) - we rely on the preface to provisionally shape our thoughts in relation to the text - this preface occupies an uncomfortable space in that it is provisional but must be read in amongst the text, questions if we should consider the entire text prefatory - liberates the reader from the seriousness of the text
- plays with whether we can release ourselves from these boundaries ie. toys with publishers - can a book have two prefaces?
- Pope’s ‘The Dunciad’ also challenges the purpose of the paratext by expanding it beyond all logical bounds
- plays with the hierarchy of text in literature ie. that readers find the preface cumbersome so implicates us in having to read it and the arbitrariness of the distinction
(preface)
“’tis one of the silliest things… to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opaque words… betwixt your own and your reader’s conception”
- imbues the preface with important messages
- follows exactly the sentiment he sets out and uses the structural reorganisation to exhibit his point
Squiggle of the cane - “Whilst a man is free,—cried the corporal, giving a flourish with his stick thus—”
- graphical representation captures something not easily conveyed
- part of appealing to the universality of experience - ie. when the conveyance of information relies on a reader’s ability to accurately recreate the effect - has to be able to produce a comparable effect
- visuals evoke comparable effects in the imagination much more effectively than words
“—‘My sister, mayhap,’ quoth my uncle Toby, ‘does not choose to let a man come so near her….’ Make this dash,—’tis an Aposiopesis,—Take the dash away, and write Backside,—’tis Bawdy.
- humour deriving from incongruity - we delight in the spontaneity of the passage
- intimacy of exchange is heightened through the use of comedy (allows not only for jokes, but inside jokes)
- becomes a form of shibboleth in certain circumstances
- typographic representations of absence reflect the larger formal structure of the novel as a whole - transitions between modes, between languages etc. creates the space in which language can fill the space that Sterne has vacated
- lack of distinction between high culture of “aposiopesis” and low culture of “bawdy” - readers need to widen their minds to the reception of both registers (education takes the form of reversing the codification of literature)
- author also must allow fluctuation between both binaries - otherwise they are not exploiting the full richness of language
“Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards.”
- bathos of Dr Slop
- aptronym - farcical, ridiculous, spineless
(OED: links it to mud and liquid) - physiognomy and gait - physically diminishes him, lack of authority
- relies on our comparative knowledge of the medical profession
- why do we indulge in laughing at a professional - anarchy urges this, formal riotousness reflects laughter itself
- humour is safe, however, as we have the security of knowing the outcome ie. Tristram is born
