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Narrative of Narrative (Tristram Shandy)Author(s): Jeffrey WilliamsSource: MLN, Vol. 105, No. 5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1990), pp. 1032-1045Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2905166 .Accessed: 19/09/2014 00:53

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Narrative f Narrative(Tristram handy)

Jeffrey illiams

Preliminary Claims

Tristram handy presents an extreme in novelistic nterpretation,since the presumed events of the narrative, f Tristram's utobiog-raphy and the Shandy family history, re not only told out oforder, but are frequently ut off and fragmentary. t times, thesuggestion f a word causes the narrative o ump from n event n1718, say, to Toby's battle experience at Namur in 1695. The plotis peculiar in its appearance of non-linearity nd disorder. Also,related to this, Tristram frequently nterrupts he narrated eventsand reflexively alls attention o the question of narration tself.

We will here propose that the attendant nterpretive roblemsof this odd narrative re, for the most part, due to a confusionover the concept of plot. The tendency f much of the criticism s

to take the events that the narrator ays he is narrating unques-tioningly s the plot of the novel. The narrator's tatements boutnarrating as journey, line, digression, tc.) and his recounting fwhat he is doing and when he is doing it are then seen as somehowabove or beyond the plot, as if' hese were outside the domain ofthe narrative proper. Even recent critically ophisticated eadings-for instance, Hillis Miller's using Shandy s an exemplar of thedeconstruction f linear plot, and Dennis Allen's attending o thelinguistic lay of the novel-seem to privilege he comments f thenarrator, distancing hem from the rest of the narrative, nd al-most taking them as if they were literal, s critical omments onnarrative ather than as part of the narrative tself.'

MLN, 105, (1990): 1032-1045 () 1990 by The Johns Hopkins University ress

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M L N 1033

Tristram handy s a narrative f narrative. The so-called narra-

tive intrusions and comments actually form a linear narrativewhose subject s the composing of a narrative. his narrative f thewriting s explicitly ated from 1759 to 1766. The central char-acter is the narrator who tells the story nd tries to muster thedetails of Shandy family istory, oughly rom 1695 through 1741.In other words, the plot is not limited o the umbled series of theevents of Tristram's history, ut encompasses the ordered series ofevents of Tristram's account of narration. This account is not aprivileged historical eature that s a statement f authorial nten-tion; rather, t s ust as much a fictional lement as any other nar-rated event.

Perhaps Tristram Shandy is the most typical of novels, asShklovsky ut it, because it so overtly nscribes ts own narrative, tsown act of narrating.2 very novel, at some point, becomes a nar-rative of narrative, r an allegory of narration. Here, notably, heexplicit ommenting nd interrupting arrator eflexively eplaysthe difficulty f narration, f ordering events n words, of giving

comprehensive ccount. Akin to de Man's analysis of the reflexiveself-inscription f reading in his essay on Proust called Reading,we could call this nvestigation Narrating.

Narrative

First, we should set out with preliminary efinition f narrativeand other pertinent critical terms. Gerard Genette, in his nowclassic Narrative iscourse, istinguishes hree different kinds ofnarrative. Re'cit, hich s translated s narrative, e calls the mostcentral and defines as the oral or written iscourse that under-takes to tell of an event or a series of events. 3 This generally c-cords with the Russian formalists' istinction f plot or sjlzet, andloosely follows Aristotle's efinition f plot as an imitation f ac-tions. Histoire, r story, he defines as the succession of events,which accords with the formalists' abula. The events themselves,rather than the way they are told, comprise the story nd are a

kind of content of the narrative. The re'cit s the signifier f thenarrative ext, nd the histoire hen aligns with the signified f thenarrative. Genette ntroduces third erm, narration, ranslated snarrating, which he defines as the act of narrating aken n it-

self (ND 26). He further laborates that t is the producing nar-rative action and, by extension, the whole of the real or fictional



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1034 JEFFREYWILLIAMS

situation in which that action takes place (ND 27). However,

throughout Narrative iscourse, enette proceeds to talk lmost ex-clusively bout the disarrangement f the story n the plot of Re-membrance f Things ast, and he effectively xcludes this categoryof narration. heoretically, his analysis results n little more than arepetition f the Russian formalist istinction f plot and story.

Genette's distinctions o not hold when dealing with the ques-tion of explicitly eflexive narratives ike Tristram handy, ince t sprecisely he narrating r act of narrative hat forms the re'cit fShandy. The act of narration s inseparable from the narrative,and, although frequently idden, necessarily nscribed n any nar-rative, most obviously through narrative frames and digressions,but also implicit n linguistic tructure in control of tense, use ofmood, change of voice, etc.).

Here, we will ttempt odiverge from Genette's imited focus onthe concept of plot and extend our definition o encompass bothcategories of recit nd narration.4 Without pretense to absolutestructural demarcation, we will use plot and story, or their sim-

plicity nd utility nd since there s no compelling reason to sup-plant them. We willattempt o delimit plot as a local tactical erm.Narratives an have many divergent plots. Narrative, n the otherhand, we will use as a term that encompasses the various plots andother relations of the narrative text overall. Also, we will fre-quently use narrative n a more active ense (narration, narrating),to connote the process f narrative.

These terms obviouslydraw on Genette's chema, although t iscrucial to realign them to take into account the complex of rela-tions of narrative hat Genette elides. Additionally, we must noteone significant eservation. he canonical and practical distinctionbetween plot and story s not absolute. The events of the story eveldo not exist outside narrative. The sequence according to realtime or story ime s ust one other narrative, ormed under theaegis of the sequential order of historical hronology. The realtime of a novel could never have ontological validity, ut we com-pare, almost automatically, arrative r plot time to the pervasiveand

powerfultrope of chronological time. In other words, our

terms can have no absolutely demarcated field of reference, butare relational. To be more exact, since the story s a chronologicalor historical equence of events, we could merely all it the histor-ical plot, as distinguished from the plot as it is narrated.5 n ourscheme, the narrative s not really separable term either, but en-



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compasses the complex of relations of all the terms, f the variety

and scope of textual ctions.In Tristram handy, he narrative would be the book as a whole aswe read it events, plots, anguage, etc.), whereas the plot and storyare convenient terms to mark off various salient ocal textual ac-tions. The sequence of events that could be said to comprise thestory egins roughly n 1695 and ends, according to the usual viewof plot, n 1741, or, more accurately, ncluding the description fthe act of writing, n 1766. The order-and also the duration, fre-quency, etc.-of events hronologically, n real or historical ime,as facts, s quite different rom the order of events as they arepresented n the narrative.

Anachrony

The difference between story and plot produces a comparativeratio. Genette defines the ratio of the difference etween plot timeand story imeas anachrony all forms f discordance between the

two temporal orders of story nd narrative ND 40]).A distinctivestructural eature of Tristram handy s its apparently xtreme an-achronic form, with ts frequent progressions, igressions, nd re-gressions. Criticism hat points out the non-linearity f TristramShandy s really alking bout the discordance between the chrono-logical order of events and the sequence of events that is re-counted in the plot. The plotted events do not occur in a linearlyprogressive rder, but seem to ump around in time. By compar-ison, a novel like Tom Jones moves in a fairly table and constantfashion; the difference etween plot and story imes s not exact ormimetic it does not take a year to recount a year), but propor-tionate and consistent, nd the plot is sequentially rdered, in ac-cordance with the chronological order of events. The ratio re-mains generally onstant.

Genette calls a narration ike Tristram's progression prolepsis,and defines t as a narrative maneuver which evokes n advance orcalls forward beyond the normal chronologically rogressive e-

quence. He defines n analepsis s an evocation of an event that hastaken place earlier than the time of narration. However, in Gen-ette's ystem, igressions present n odd case that s not accountedfor. n one sense, a digression s merely n event among the otherevents, except that its specific ction is the act of narrating. Mr.Shandy's detour on Slawkenbergius occurs in the sequence of



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events of Tristram's early biography, but the coordinates of the

content of the tale of Slawkenbergius o not fit nto the temporalscheme or group of events of the story proper. If one takes theprimary plot of the novel to be Tristram's biography, n a senseToby's adventures at Namur and with the widow Wadman arethen digressive nd outside the course of that plot. However, theyare analeptic and fill n material that directly ears on the story.Tristram's biography ies within he larger field of background ofShandy family istory; onversely, rom he standpoint f the nar-rative, he analepsis is subordinate to the plot of Tristram's biog-raphy. Another way of putting t is that the Shandy history s asupporting ubplot within he central plot. In the case of a digres-sion, there s no such temporal or causal plot relation. Digressionsform sorts of pockets within the sequence of the plot. They aresubordinate o the plot within which they ccur, yet they re sepa-rate from hat sequence of events. The act they depict s the act ofnarrative. hey inscribe he narrative unction. n Tristram handy,the narrative f narrating, ndicated overtly y narrative ntrusions

and digressions, nd less obviously by digressive tales (Slawken-bergius, LeFever, Andouillet, etc.), belies a sort of deep structureof narrative eflexivity.6

Time of Narrating

Genette distinguishes four types of narration according to tem-poral position: 1) the subsequent, r usual past-tense narration,where the time of the plot s beyond that of the story; ) the prior,which s rare, and is the predictive, s in dreams or sciencefiction;3) the simultaneous, r narrative n the present cotemporaneouswith he action ND 217), a mode common n current fiction; nd4) interpolated, hich s between action. We can see from hese dis-tinctions hat Tristram handy, s a narrative of' the plot of Tris-tram's autobiography, is a subsequent or past tense narration.However, nsofar s it recounts ts act of' narrating, t is actuallysimultaneous narrative. n this ense, n general, all narratives re

simultaneous.

Narrative Levels

One of Genette's crucial distinctions s between a diegetic nd ameta-diegeticevelof narrative. his is how he defines metadiegesis:



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Any event a narrative recounts s at a diegetic evel immediately

higher han the evel at which he narrating ct producing thisnar-

rative is placed (ND 228). As with his cordoning off narration,Genette tacitly ssumes a stable plot-diegetic-level of narrative.He collapses the narrative ext to that singularly rivileged evel.Genette calls the intrusion f an extra- or meta-diegetic arratorinto the diegesis a metalepsis,nd, specifically iting Tristram handy,claims that, Sterne pushed the thing o far as to entreat he nter-vention of the reader, whom he beseeched to close the door orhelp Mr. Shandy get back to his bed (ND 234). This is an odd-and symptomatic-statement, ince Genette makes a very basicmistake n identification. t is of course Tristram who is narratingor doing the entreating. ven if t were an author Sterne, uch acharacterization would of course only be a persona, a fictional ep-resentation. This succinctly ndicates the general turn n Genette'scriticism owards separating off and literalizing he narrator ndthe act of narrating, s if Tristram were somehow separate fromthe narrative, nd as if his comments gave a gloss of the author's

intention.eparating off this evel gives t the status of literal om-

mentary, when narratologically, t s a diegesisor plot of the actionof narration. Tristram's omments re not separate from, utsideor above the narrative, s the term meta-diegesis mplies. On thecontrary, ristram s the central character n the plot of the nar-rating. What Genette calls the meta-diegetic s really only oneother plot, that is not demonstrably ny more literal or less fic-tional than any other plot. The reason why Tristram handy eemsso turgidly nachronic s merely n explicit portrait f the problem

and struggle of the act of narration, of marshalling sequentialtemporal order.Revising Genette, we find no ontological difference between

narrative evels.The fiction f most novels s to claim that hechar-acters have empirical reality, r that they re mimetic. n explicitlyreflexive works-Six Characters n Search f n Author, lthough nota novel, s a convenient xample, as is Tristram handy nd the nar-ration of writing-the second level claims empirical reality hat shighlighted y the announcement of contrast with the first evel.The six characters n Pirandello's play are admittedly ictional, utthey have no more or less substantial mpirical validity han othercharacters. Rhetorically, they make the other characters seemmore realistic ince they re announced as fictional. he relation ssimilar n Tristram handy, lthough the characters re announced



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as part of a family history. ristram, he writer, oints to the nar-

rative xistence of the Shandy family. ristram handy s unusual inthat t callsattention o the fictional ature of its text, lthough thelayer that unmasks the fiction s not more real or less fictional hanthat which t unmasks. Mimesis s only a tropical evel to establishpoint of reference, but can never establish an absolute standardagainst which to measure levels of fictionality rom outside thenarrative. t is a relational value, determined olely within nd bythe narrative.

General Order of the Novel

Theodore Baird's standard essay, The Time Scheme of TristramShandy nd a Source, argues against earlier criticism hat sees noorder in Shandy, nd is probably the first rticle to establish uth-oritatively hat there s an accurate historical imesequence in thenovel: There is a carefully planned and executed framework fcalendar time n what s usually considered a chaos of whimsical-

ities and indecencies. 7 Baird paraphrases the events of the novelin chronological rder, from 1689 to 1750, and concludes that farfrom being a wild and whimsicalwork, Tristram handy s an exactlyexecuted historical novel. 8 What Baird has reconstructed s whatwe have been calling the story or real time of the novel, whichagrees with alendar or historical ime. The polemic of Baird's ar-gument, to re-establish the coherence of Shandy, may be well-taken, but it is limited n two ways. First, the framework f cal-endar time cannot be confused with plot, which yields quite dif-ferent results. Baird imposes the order of chronological time tosmooth out the narrative, which otherwise demonstrates verydisordered chronology. Second, Baird totally gnores the time ofnarration, which s dated from 1759 to 1766.

To examine the difference etween the story(line) nd its inearsequence in time, nd the plot and its equence as narrated, we willuse the following notational bbreviations. Tristram handy an bedivided into five narrative locs, given n chronological rder: the

first A) from bout 1695 to 1697, when Toby was at Namur andwas wounded, and came to stay with his brother Walter; thesecond (B) occurs primarily around 1713, and culminates inToby's adventures with the widow Wadman; the third C) centerson 1718, where the autobiographical narrative properly begins,and is marked by Tristram's birth n November 5, 1718, or rather



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by his begetting n March 1718, and extends to the slam of the

window sash; the fourth D) occurs for the most part n 1741, andaccounts for Tristram's European tour, which akes up the seventhbook; the fifth E), which s rarely aken nto account, occurs from1759 to 1766, and incorporates the account of Tristram'a narra-tion. To summarize broadly, the general time sequence of thenovel in its entirety oes something ike this: volume I takes placeprimarily t the time of Tristram's conception and birth, whichcould be further eparated into C and Ca, C being November1718, and Ca March 1718. The bulk of the first olume is his fa-ther's and uncle Toby's conversation nd the events downstairs,and sometimes efers oToby's time t Namur and his wound, andalso to Mrs. Shandy's marriage settlement. We will mark these asA and Aa. These events occur under the general auspices ofTristram's narration, marked by the first person pronoun ( Iwish . . ), and by commentary, nterjection, nd explanation. Wefind out where he gets the story he tells bout his conception Tomy uncle Toby Shandy do I stand indebted for the preceding an-

ecdote . . . in chapter 3), and he addresses his readers about hisnarrating (chapter 4, etc.). He even dates his own narrating(March 9, 1759, March 26, 1759).9The other events re governedby Tristram's writing, nd the text s permeated with references oit. This fifth evel, and its relationship o the other events, we willrepresent ike this: E (C, Ca (A, Aa)). This is a much reduced rep-resentation, ut it should prove useful in describing the novel.'0For the moment, we will not note the many references o the plotof Tristram's narration, ince they are so frequent; we will firstattend to the various subplots n each volume.

The second volume starts with narrative ntrusions E), but,again, bracketing that plot, what Tristram describes is Toby atNamur (about maps, his cure, his charge, etc. [A, B]), although theprimary ocus s still he time of Tristram's birth C), and what thewomen and Slop do. The third volume is mostly oncerned withObadiah's knots, he complications f the birth, he use of forcepsand the question of Tristram's nose (C). There are also references

to Flanders (A), and Wadman (B), and we should note the sub-stantial ntrusions f the preface and the digression on noses. Thefourth volume records more of the digression Slawkenbergius-C, in that t is told by Tristram's father, o we will mark t Cd tosignify he special nature of digressions, mentioned above), andMr. Shandy's recovery, nd it harks back to Bobby's death (Ba).



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There are notable narrative intrusions about the proposed

chapters on sleep, buttonholes, and the question of chapters.Volume five recounts Tristram's mother's overhearing his father,the question of Tristapaedia, and the slammed sash (C, or since itis beyond his birth, Cs for the time of the slammed sash and Tris-tram's early ife). Volume six digresses on LeFever (Cd), recountsSlop and Susannah (C), Tristram's breeches (Cs), and refers toToby's land and campaigns, Utrecht A) and the widow Wadman(B). The seventh volume primarily tells of the French tourthrough Paris, Lyons, etc. (D), and digresses on Andouillets Dd).Volume eight fills n details about Toby with the widow Wadman(B),and nine, n uncharacteristically ontinuous fashion, ontinuesabout Toby's siege and Trim's assistance B). This sequence couldthen be given: E (C (Ca, A, Aa)- C (A, B)- C (A, B)- C (B, Cd)- Cs-C (Cs, A, B)- D (Dd)- B- B). The plot(s) could be reductively um-marized: E (C-C-C-C-Cs-C-D-B-B),factoring ut the level of nar-ration.

From these notations, we should be able to see that the overall

shape of the novel is fairly imple. Bracketing he account of thenarration, t generally enters on Tristram's birth, with slight x-tended analeptic turn t the close, filling n details of Toby's story.This order obviously disagrees with the purely chronological se-quence of the story. The plot is not linear or sequential in thisview, but instead seemingly tatic, ince it centers on the scenes ofthe men downstairs uring Tristram's irth. t gives the effect f along and rambling onversation, hat meanders through recollec-tions of past events, nd then returns o the present ituation.

Narrative nstance

To examine the plot and the shifts n action more closely,we willschematize a short passage, from Volume I, chapter 21 (I, 21),when Tristram's father sks, I wonder what's all that noise (TS63), to II, 6, which returns to his father's, What can they bedoing, and Toby's knocking he ashes off his pipe. This is a con-

venient passage to look at since, chronologically, here s of courseno separation between the events. They occur between smoke ofToby's pipe. The sequence of this ction s not only broken, but amultitude f narrative vents occurs in between.

The passage begins in the central scene, of Tristram's birth, nNovember 1718 (C), but after two paragraphs the narrator nter-



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rupts, for write n such a hurry, nd not only callsattention ohis writing ut gives the exact date (March 26, 1759), time 9 to 10in the morning), and weather ( very rainy ). The action clearlyand explicitly enters on the time of the writing E), which n itsspecificity nd elaboration s very unusual, making us conscious ofthe fictional nature of the narrative. Then the narrator ommentswith his famous line: But I forget my uncle Toby, whom all thiswhile we have left knocking he ashes out of his tobacco pipe (stillE [TS 65]). Further, he narrator digresses about Toby and aunt

Dinah, while addressing his Madam, which raises a complex ef-fect of digression, d, but also to the past, A and Bb). However,since it is a direct address of the narrator My father, s I toldyou, You will magine, Madam ), it occurs in the present of thenarration (E). There is also a reference to Namur and Toby'swound (A [TS 67]), to Lillabullero, and to the Shandean system(Bb). The next chapter (22) is a digression about the digressive-progressive nature of his work, eaving the subject of Toby ( I wasjust going to have given you the great outlines of my uncle Toby'swhimsical character [TS 72]) and speaks directly about the(problem of) narrative This is vilework TS73]) (E).Chapter 23discusses the question of drawing a man's character E), 24 beginsabout hobby horses (Ed), and goes on to a fairly traightforwarddescription f Toby's wound and confinement A, Aa). Volume IIstarts with narrative action ( I have begun a new book ... [TS81]), but s interspersed with n account of Toby (Aa). Chapter 2 ismost concerned with critics' questioning ( So, Sir Critick . . [TS

85]) (E). Chapter 3 is most aboutToby's map and projectiles nd

Namur (Aa), and chapter 4 returns primarily o the discussion ofnarration E) ( I would not give a groat for that man's knowledgein pencraft . . ., Writers of my stamp . . . [TS 91]), although italso discusses Toby's cure (Aa). It ends with this reflexive, pro-leptic passage: 'Tis the subject of the next chapter to set forthwhat that ause and crotchet was. I own, when that's done, twill etime to return back to the parlour fire-side, where we left my uncleToby in the middle of his sentence TS 92). Chapter 5 talks more

of Toby and Trim and their hobby-horsical adventures (Aa).There, Trim's suggestion to build a bastion s in fairly ypical de-scriptive tyle, lthough the section begins and ends with the nar-rator's comments which again transgress he line of fiction Atpresent the scene must drop,-and change for the parlour fire-side [TS99]). And, as promised, hapter 6 returns o the scene in



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the parlour ( -what can they be doing, brother? said my fa-

ther . . ) and the snapping of the pipe.Our shorthand notation for this ection comes out as follows: C-E (-E-A-Bb-E-A-Bb)- - E- E- (A-)Aa- E (-Aa)-E- Aa- E (-Aa)- Aa(-E)-C (-E). As this helps to show, there s no linear developmentin the plot of Tristram's autobiography. The narrative of Tris-tram's birth s broken, but what interrupts s not continuous orsequential. t shuttles ack and forth, enerally rom henarrator'scomments and accounts of what he is doing (E) to Toby's andother past events A). Hillis Miller's rgument for the deconstruc-tion of linear plot sborne out in this onstant huttling ction. Notonly s it out of sequence, but it rarely repeats or sustains n indi-vidual plot. The narrative, rom he base of the scene in the housein 1718, as well as from the base of the narrating, s extremelyanachronic.

Typically, ther novels e.g. TomJones) have a stable and consis-tent ine of narration hat s rarely broken, xcept by an occasionalanalepsis to give background. Tristram handy s strange, even

unique, in its frequent shiftsn

time, backwardsand forwards,

without ustaining temporal ground. Locally, Shandy s anythingbut static. Why t appears static from distance, n an overall sche-matization, derives from an effect imilar to looking at a rapidlyvibrating bject, that moves to a blur and looks as if t were still.Upclose, the case is very different. o expand our former escription,we will call this huttling motion oscillatory. ristram handy emon-strates n oscillating plot.

Narrative of Narrative

We have been fairly areful thus far to distinguish what Baird andother critics usually consider to be the events of the novel-theevents of Tristram's birth nd upbringing, nd the background ofthe Shandy family particularly ncle Toby). But, to the extent hatthe narrator so often interrupts nd explicitly tells what he isdoing, even giving the date he is writing, ristram handy ecounts

a present tense narrative f narrative. n 1,18, Tristram recounts,I am now writing his book for the edification of the world-which s March 9, 1759 (TS44). In 1,21,mentioned bove, he sayshe is writing between 9 and 10 in the morning of a rainy day,March 26, 1759 (TS 64). In IV,13, in a famous passage that callsattention othe difference etween narrative nd real time, he tells



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that he is a year older but has only got ... almost into the mid-dle of my fourth volume-and no farther han to my first ay'slife . . (TS 286). In V,19, he names the day ( and I am this day[August the 10th, 1761] [TS 376]). In VII,1, he speaks of hislodgings and his goal to write two volumes a year. Finally, n thelast dated reference, n IX,1, he tells how he is rather nformallydressed: And here am I sitting, his 12th day of August 1766, n apurple erkin and yellowpair of slippers, without ither wigor capon . . . (TS 600). From these references o Tristram's writing nhis room, we can conclude that the events of the most temporally

immediate plot of Tristram handy re not those of Tristram's past)autobiography, ut of his composing the narrative f his autobiog-raphy in his room.11 n this respect, despite seeming confusion,Tristram handy s a straightforward inear narrative that exactlyfollows hronological ime, from 1759 to 1766.

In addition to these explicit references to the sequence of hiswriting, here are numerous descriptions f and comments n thenature of narrative, ome of which we have briefly noted above.The text spins out metaphors for narrative, s progressive move-ment, as a trip or excursion, as a line or thread, as an attack, smachine, as debt, and significantly or our purposes, as differingfrom real time TS 103, 286, 322, 510, etc.). In fact, Tristram handydemonstrates kind of narrative metaphorrhea, nd part of itshumor drives from hisfrequent ntoning f figures or narrative.Indeed, the text s permeated with running monologue of narra-torial citvity, ielding constant plot of narrating n the record ofthe writing s well as in the seemingly mnipresent discussion of

narrative. Also, as we have mentioned, n the evel of action of theother plots (say, of 1718 or so), Toby and Tristram's father fre-quently digress to tell stories. In these various ways, TristramShandy hematizes he figuration f narrative.

To return o our initial oncerns, Genette's tructural chema iscomprehensive nd illuminating when applied to the level he callsthe diegetic (i.e. the primary plot), but it does not adequatelyaccount for this hinge of narrative eflexivity, hen narrative ep-resents tself. As we have seen in Tristram handy, he meta-diegeticlevel-the events of the plot of the narration-is a significant ndsalient evel of action of the novel. The novel demonstrates kindof narratorial xcess. In general, reflexive features, uch as a nar-rator's omments, o-called narrative ntrusions, rames, tc., fore-ground the question of narration. By making these features on-



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spicuous and so prominent, Tristram handymaximally hematizesnarrative. Tristram handy ives overt ignalsof its status s an alle-gory of narrative, ven if those signals are difficult o decipher,and even if they have been obscured by conventional theories ofnarrative, t least until now.East Carolina University

NOTES

1 J. Hillis Miller, Narrative Middles: A Preliminary utline, Genre 11 (1978):375-87, and Dennis Allen, Sexuality/Textuality n Tristram handy, tudies nEnglish iterature 5 (1985): 651-70. Miller ites Tristram's se of a wiggly ine toexemplify his own critical tatement bout the deconstruction f linear order.Miller s not then reading the novel but culling from t for use as paraphrase.He ignores the narrative ituation n the novel, and what t might mean for anarrator to use this figure. Rhetorically, ristram's omments eem akin to apolitician's lickly dmitting mistake: by his admission, he gains a reputationfor ntegrity. ne cannot take the narrator t his word.

If there s a deconstructive moment n Tristram handy, t occurs regardless fthe narrator's recognition f it. It would be a constitutive eature of language.Allen's article, although it invokes Derrida, really talks about polysemous orplural uses of words sex, etc.), which s not deconstruction, t least in any rig-orous sense of the term.

2 Tristram Shandy is the most typical novel in world literature -VictorShklovsky, Sterne's Tristram handy: Stylistic ommentary, RussianFormalistCriticism: our Essays, rans. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (Lincoln: U ofNebraska P, 1965) 57. Shklovsky's lassic essay discusses the various ways thatSterne defamiliarizes tandard form.

See also J. Hillis Miller, iction nd Repetition: even nglishNovels Cambridge:Harvard UP, 1982)4. Miller cites Marcel Mauss' comment n how he chooses todescribe those primitive ocieties hat exhibit maximal or excessive qualities, tosee them better. n a similar way, one could say that Tristram handy hematizesor inscribes he act of narration maximally.

3 Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse:An Essay in Method, rans. Jane Lewin(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980). Hereafter referred o as ND with page referencesplaced parenthetically n the text. Genette offers comprehensive rhetoric fnarrative tructures, articularly f the temporal relations f plot; his work hashad a foundational nfluence on narratology nd narratologists, uch as Sey-mour Chatman, Mieke Bal, Gerald Prince, nd others.

4 Don Bialostosky, Narrative Diction in Wordsworth's oetics of Speech, Com-parative iterature 4 (1982): 308. Bialostosky, rom a Bakhtinian perspective,criticizesGenette's definition f narrative r plot as an imitation f events. Gen-ette follows Aristotle's efinition ut gnores the question of imitation f speech

or voice,as in lyric. Bialostosky its Plato's mimesisgainst Aristotle's nd finds tsuperior, ince t encompasses the world of speech. For our purposes, we will ryto define narrative s encompassing both the fields of action and language;language is not separable, distanced, or a mimetic window pane, but narrativereflexively ecounts cts of language and narration.

5 This analysis of Genette's scheme accords with Culler's critique of Chatman'sdivision of story nd discourse. See Jonathan Culler, Story nd Discourse in



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the Analysis f Narrative, he Pursuit f igns:Semiotics,iterature, econstruction(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981) 179.

6 On this question of reflexivity, ee James E. Swearingen, Reflexivityn TristramShandy: An Essay n Phenormenologicalriticism New Haven: Yale UP, 1977) andRobert Alter, Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious enre Berkeley: U ofCalifornia P, 1975). Swearingen does not really alk about narrative eflexivity;rather, he is concerned with Tristram's eflexive onsciousness.His focus s thephenomenology r psychology f a character. For us, reflexivity s a function fnarrative tructure, ot of the psychology r consciousnessof a character.

Alter s one of the few to discuss self-conscious r reflexive narratives, utwe would diverge from his approach in two significant ways: 1) the narrativefeatures re reflexive n an almost grammatical ense (as se laver s reflexive),rather han conscious who's conscious? does this ttribute onsciousness o thetext?); and 2) Alter generally points out a novel's consciously alling ttentionto its fictionality, o its breaking the illusion of fiction; he does not delimitvarious ref exive narrative features, when narrative nscribes ts own func-tioning.

See also Lucien Dallenbach, The Mirror n the ext, rans. Jeremy WhiteleywithEmma Hughes (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989) for a general typology f themise n abyme r mirror tructure n narrative. Dallenbach very broadly definesmise n abyme s any aspect enclosed within work that shows a similarity iththe work that contains t (8). This is no doubt a very arge category. We willattempt o be more precise and to examine salient reflexive features r struc-tures of narrative e.g. a narrative rame).

7 Theodore Baird, The Time Scheme of Tristram handy nd a Source, PMLA51 (1939): 804. I use Baird because his article s the standard one on the histor-ical aspect of Tristram handy nd because it represents what seems to be a trendin the early criticism: o argue for the order of Shandy.Recent criticism, ikeHillis Miller's Narrative Middles (which argues for the non-linearity f thenovel and makes it an allegory of the deconstruction f linear coherence), andElizabeth Harries' Sterne's Novels: Gathering Up the Fragments ELH 49(1982): 35-49 (which schematizes four types of fragmentation), oes in the op-posite direction. Oddly enough, the criticism eems to have come full ircle overthis question of order vs. disorder; hence, our attention here to an already fa-miliar ssue.

8 Baird, 819.

9 Laurence Sterne, TheLife nd Opinions f Tristram handy, entleman, d. JamesAiken Work New York: Odyssey, 1940) 44, 64. Hereafter ited parentheticallyin the text s TS, with page references n the text.

10 A more accurate or exact formula would probably ook like this: Chapter 1)E-(Ca-E)-E-C- (chap. 2) Ed-homunculus- (chap. 3) E-C-Ca-ad infinitum,which would result n a long and prohibitively umbersome notation.

11 Although the general claims here for narrative re much more extreme, ndthe rhetorical orientation entirely different, his fundamentally grees withWayne Booth's Tristram handy nd the Problem of Formal Coherence in TheRhetoric f Fiction Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961) 221-240. Booth argues thatTristram handy as formal oherence n its dramatic presentation f the act ofwriting. he authorial commentary s not disruptive, ut comes to underscorethe dominant role of the teller. This role of course points to some sort of ethicalposition of the author for Booth, whereas for us it points to issues of narrativereflexivity, nd precisely not an author.

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