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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1760 - 1767)

By Laurence Sterne (1713 - 1768), the son of an impoverished army officer, became Anglican priest. However, he understood human instinct. It is highly “subjective” novel full of humour, emotion and fantasy, controlled by cool, ironic wit. A narrator pretends he can’t really begin. A nominal hero, Tristram, not born till Volume IV! The circumstances preceding and during birth are dealt with in elaborate detail. The novel is full of talk of immediate relatives and neighbours which sounds like a conventional biography but full of digressions, jokes played on the reader, and questioning of philosophical assumptions about Time and the association of ideas. 

Read the following extract where Tristram is talking about the problems associated with writing a personal biography:    
    Upon looking into my mother’s marriage settlement, in order to satisfy myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we could proceed any further in this history; - I had the good fortune to pop upon the very thing I wanted before I had read a day and a half straight forwards, -  it might have taken me up a month; - which shews plainly, that when a man sits down to write a history, - though it be but the history of Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb, he knows no more than his heels what lets and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his way, - or what a dance he may be led, by one excursion or another, before all is over. Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule, - straight forward; - for instance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever once turning his head aside either to the right hand or to the left, - he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey’s end; - but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various
        Accounts to reconcile:
        Anecdotes to pick up:
        Inscriptions to make out:
         Stories to weave in: 
        Traditions to sift:
        Personages to call upon: 
        Panegyrics to paste up at this door;
         Pasquiandes at that:  -  All which both the man and his mule are quite exempt from. To sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be looked into, and rolls, records, documents and endless genealogies, which Justice ever and anon calls him back to stay the reading of: - In short, there is no end of it; - for my own part, I declare I have been at it these last six weeks, making all the speed I possibly could, - and am not yet born: - I have just been able, and that’s all, to tell you when it happened, but not how; - so that you see the thing is yet far from being accomplished.    
    These unforeseen stoppages, which I own I had no conception of when I first set out; -  but which, I am convinced now will rather increase than diminish as I advance – have struck out a hint which I am resolved to follow; - and that is, - not to be in a hurry; - but to go on leisurely writing and publishing two volumes of my life every year; - which, if I am suffered to go on quietly, and can make a tolerable bargain with my bookseller, I shall continue to do as long as I 
live

Post-reading activities:
- What kind of narration is this? Do you find any unusual narrative forms?  Pay special attention to the unordinary use of punctuation marks? In your opinion, what is their function in the extract?
- What relations does the narrator set up with his readers? How does he do it?
- According to Tristram, what is the central problem facing a historiographer? 
- In what ways does a muleteer differ from a historiographer?
- What does Tristram say about his attempts to write his own history? Is he confident about being able to proceed with his history? Does he feel anxious about finishing the book? What seems to be his main concern in this respect? Do you think he is being serious?
- Theoretically speaking, could Tristram’s story have an ending? If so, when? If not, why?
- What are the main differences between this kind of narration and the third person narration? What effect does this narration exert upon you as a reader?
- Do you think the text by Sterne demonstrates the inner workings of the human mind? 
- If you were to write your autobiography what problems would you expect to encounter?