The Visual Devices In Laurence Sterne's “Tristram Shandy“

11 Pages 2730 Words

Shandy has become a critical commonplace. Even though Sterne himself was interested in fine art, the relevance of visual representation to Tristram Shandy is greater than mere interest on Sterne’s part in the painters of his time. Tristram Shandy questions fundamental ideas of linguistic representation and the aptness of language to accurately depict reality, thereby questioning the very conventions of writing. On that particular relevance of the visual aspect in Tristram Shandy rests my choice to examine the images embedded in the text of the book itself.
All the visual devices in Tristram Shandy function as satire on the then prevailing assumptions of the mutual interchangeability of linguistic and visual. However, Sterne’s typographical oddities, while making a serious point, are also amusing and augment the comical quality of his novel. Sterne’s devices have a common effect in drawing attention to the physical substance of the book, they make the reader realize that he is holding a printed book in his hands and focus his attention from imaginative involvement with the text, onto the book itself. Attention is drawn from Tristram’s story, and placed onto the physical forms of Tristram’s narrative. The reader is aware of Tristram’s story, of his merely fictional status, and of the entire work’s existence only as represented by the material book.
The graphical devices of Tristram Shandy can be divided into three categories. The first category consists of instances when Sterne calls on the reader to help him in the process of writing the book (for example, the infamous ‘blank page’). Secondly, numerous devices are used to represent gestures, movement, feelings, conversation etc. and as such they draw the reader’s attention to the shortcomings of language. The countless asterisks, used in lieu of inappropriate words and even entire sentences and paragraphs, form the last category.
The first visual element in Trist...