Night Thoughts

Tristram Shandy

n Published in 9 volumes between 1759 and 1766, Laurence Sterne's comic meta-novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, remains one of the most engaging reflections on the nature of The Book and enormously popular during Sterne's lifetime.

n Yet this is all part of the humour of a story that takes longer to tell than the life does to live!

n Though Tristram's conception takes place in Volume 1 (and is intimately connected with the winding of a clock), he is not actually born until the work's 3rd volume, so constantly does the expression of his opinions intrude upon the narrative of his life.

n For Sterne as for John Locke in his Essay Upon Human Understanding (1690), people's apprehension of time is subjective; as Sterne expresses it, `the idea of duration... is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas, - and is the true scholastick pendulum'.

n The text purports, as the title indicates, to set out the "autobiography" of Tristram Shandy, however, the birth of the hero, which the author sets about to discuss on the 1st page, does not finally occur until volume 4 and he is not breeched until volume 6.

n Instead the novel largely concerns itself with events and personages from before the author's birth:

n his father Walter's obsession with the influence of the proper name on a man's character,

n his Uncle Toby's hobby of re-enacting famous sieges,

n the death of Yorick the Parson from the ill-effects of rumour -- these are among the many, many little tales the novel tells.

n What the story is about is of secondary importance to how it is told. It is thoroughly performative, not so much a story but an extended act of and meditation on story-telling.

James Thomson: “Seasons”/ “Winter”:

WINTER

See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,

Sullen and sad, with all his rising¹ train —

Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these

my theme,

These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought,

And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred

glooms!

Cogenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,

Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,

When nursed by careless solitude I lived,

And sung of Nature with unceasing joy, Pleased

have I wandered through your rough

domain;

Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;

Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent

burst;

Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brewed,

In the grim evening-sky.

Prologue to “Winter” (1726): “In еvеrу dress nature is greatly charming – whether she puts on the crimson robes of the morning, the strong effulgence of noon, the sober suit of the evening, оr the deep sables of blackness and tempest? Нow gay looks the Spring, how glorious the Summer, how pleasing the Autumn and how venerable the Winter.”

Edward Young:

Night Thoughts

NIGHT FIRST

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