Tristram Shandy And It's Narrative Strategy

一,Laurence Sterne and Tristram ShandyThis chapter briefly introduces Laurence Sterne's life and experience, how this unique work comes into being and the main features of the leading roles.Although Sterne's family has a high status in the society, he is in a turmoil when he is young. His college life leaves him a good basic for literature. After graduation from the University of Cambridge, he goes into the church as a clergyman. At the time, he is influenced by his uncle's political position, and he propagandas for him, therefore, this work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, is the product of political conflicts between the two Parties.From the name of it, readers may think it is about a gentleman's life, while the protagonist is just a fetus. It is actually about the life and opinions of Shandys'family members, friends and servants. The work itself has no complete plot and is full of strange symbols between the lines. Among these odd writings, the characters are described vividly. But still the book follows the two main sequences, one is about my father and his home; another is about my uncle and his love story,二,Tristram Shandy's narrative strategyWhen the author writes the story, he breaks the sequence of the time and the space. In this book, the readers can not find the time sequence clearly, the writer just writes what he thinks and feels, so the narrative time is changing all the time. But the muddle and straying are used by Sterne intentionally, he always follows this rule to deal with his plot, and these are his special writing techniques.Sterne's writing skill is very odd, too. He totally ignores the structure,the clarity of the language,the grammar and the figure of speech. Sometimes Sterne leaves some space for readers to fill in, and the length of the chapters is different, some are very long, while some are very shortSterne breaks the traditional rules of handling the story's plot. He sees no purpose in arranging it. Some of the plots just function as the basic of the explanation of some strange phenomena. In Sterne's point of view, plot is not the main body, but the complement三,Tristram Shandy and the novel's tradition in eighteenth centurySterne's narrative strategy is not totally different from the main mode of traditional novels. Although there are a lot of straying topics and the inserting discussion, the main narrative clue is putting on. And the narrator, at the same time is the protagonist, the double identities exactly show the real spirit of the novel.On the surface, this kind of narrative skill differs from the traditional ones, in fact, readers can find many overlaps in writing techniques. Tristram Shandy does not disobey the creative rules of eighteenth century novel. The writer follows the realism in another extreme. This results in a unique form.Life is not like the arranging plot in the story. There are uncountable accidents in reality, and there may not be certain connections between them. Life itself is a muddle, which is what Sterne wants to show to his readers in this kind of writing.Sterne's real identity is a clergyman. While in the book he uses a lot of dirty jokes and quibbles concerning of sex. Many critics therefore consider him as an irresponsible writer.Certainly Sterne is not a moralist, but that does not mean he is not concern about it. Uncle Tobby is the typical model of perfect human morality. Such a role can exactly matches the main characters in eighteenth century novels. In the light of this view, we can see Sterne's novel embodies the traditional moral value. Thus his novel is not a challenge to the old ones. On the contrary, it is a complement.Although Sterne brings firth new ideas to the novels'writing and he creates a new method of narration, in general, he doesn't deviate the main mode of novels'writing in eighteenth century. His narrative strategy, writing standard are all coming from the realism. Therefore, Sterne does belong to the eighteenth century.