Indeterminate relationship between Sterne, Tristram and readers.docVIP

Indeterminate relationship between Sterne, Tristram and readers 　　Abstract. This paper will analyze the identities of Sterne, his two spokesmen ? Tristram and Yorick, and the reader of this novel to show their indeterminate identities and the indeterminate relationship between them. 　　Keywords: Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Indereminate 　　1. Laurence Sterne and His Novel ? Tristram Shandy 　　Laurence Sterne was a prophet. Like most prophets he has appeared before the traditional critics in the appearance of madness. To some of his madness has seemed to share in the imagined divinity of the poet. To others it has partaken of satanic confusion and chaos. Surely many would agree that his vision has been achieved in our own time, but even they must agree that the validity of the vision has still to be conformed. Tristram Shandy can be seen as the Finnegans Wake of the eighteenth century, and it remains as paradoxical to its sympathizers and as distasteful to the traditional critics as it was at the time of its publication in 1759. 　　The paradox begins, not unsuitably, in that very area to which the critic frequently turns first: the attitude, the personality, the life, of the author. Laurence Sterne is not the least unknown of his own creations, and to differentiate between the man and the creation is a different task. Sterne never created a more successful paradox than that indeterminate image of himself which he constantly transmuted in the distorting mirror of his art. Like the wise fool, the fascinating court jester, Sterne lives curiously without a private life, the quality of his interior self only implied by his public statements. He is acceptable as a social critic because he confronts society as a criticized, eccentric and solitary, without place or investment. 　　It is not surprising, then, that Sterne presents his own personae, Tristram and Yorick, as jester figures. They are the proper spokesman for he idea that “everything in the world is big with jest,