Download Locke`s Effect on Laurence Sterne`s Novel Tristram

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Locke's Effect on Laurence Sterne's Novel Tristram Shandy
pp. (94-98)
Dr. Sabah Atallah
Assist. Ins. Fawziya Mousa Ghanim
[email protected]
Abstract
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) was an English novelist , humorist , and a clergyman in York for many years
before his talent became apparent. He wrote Tristram Shandy (1759-1767), an experimental novel, issued in
nine parts . The story was subordinate to its narrator's free associations and digressions . It was considered as one
of the most important ancestors of the psychological and the stream -consciousness of fiction. By dramatic
changing of chronological and psychological durations, he emphasized the dual nature of time. When an
individual's response was reasonable.
Sterne 's work was influenced by John Locke's assumptions, when he dealt less with the passage of time as
the clock measures it than with mental time. When the events move less quickly than clock time. Sterne's beliefs
were accomplished by Locke's theory, when the mind and its "representation of the world stand against the
Newtonian Belief in a world that is attainable and capable of being measured by clockwork standards"(
Jefferson, 1968:10)
The aim of this paper is to discuss the duality of two poles of time; the time of clock and the time of thought)
shedding light on the effect of Locke's idea of duration on Sterne's mind, and how he the writer made it
applicable.
Keywords: John Lock , Laurence Sterne , Trasrtam Shandy, Time.
1.Introduction
1.1 Laurence Sterne : The Literary Achievement
L
aurence Sterne was born in Ireland in 1713, the year of the treaty of
Utrecht that ended the war of the Spanish succession in which his father Roger Sterne
had served as an ensign . Sterne received a Bachelor of Arts from Jesus College
Cambridge. In 1738, he became vicar at Sutton in the Forest some eight miles north
York.( Jefferson, 1968:11)
He married Elizabeth Lumley but his marriage was unsuccessful being a political
journalist . Sterne provided made more enemies than friends during his bondage to the Whigs.
He wrote about local politics in 1742. In 1748, Sterne published "The Unknown World
Verses" in the Gentleman's Magazine . Several volumes of letters were published after his
death like Journal to Eliza ( Allen,2002:224). Sterne composed a witty allegory in the manner
of Swift entitled A political Romance , it was known as The History Good Warm Watch Coat.)
The enormous popularity of Sterne’s unusual novel Tristram Shandy gave him social
access to the great houses of London and Bath. The novel couldn’t be said to have a message.
It attacked almost every field of human inquiries, ethics, theology, philosophy, sex and
politics. (Allen,2002:225) .
The novel was widely popular, the enthusiastic James Boswell rhymed " who has not
Tristram Shandy read / is any mortal so ill- bread". (Allen,2002:225). It was published in
1759, when Sterne was forty six. Sterne looked for a climate that was useful for his
damaged lungs. He spent a good deal of time in France that furnished him the material for
Book 7 of Tristram Shandy, as well as for the charming and successful Sentimental Journey
. He died in March 1768 at the age of fifty- five as he was regarded as a forerunner of all the
later novelists.
1.2. The Impact of Locke's Contributions
Henri Bergson (1859-1901), was a French philosopher of evolution, who believed that "a
disbelief in surface reality denies the clock and makes the mind supreme arbiter of all
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temporal dimensions" (Karl, 1972:23). The significance of an experience established the
reality of time by the perception of mind and the sensation of the body.
Like Bergson, John Locke attacked the traditional view of the human mind's
independence, he insisted on the integrity of the body and mind . Being a moral philosopher,
he was one of the late 17th century figures with a formidable influence in the 18th century. In
his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1860), he rejected the belief in innate ideas.
He argued that the mind at birth was as a tabula rasa (blank sheet). He believed that the
world could be attained through the senses, which were they over controlled by changes. The
essay tried to define that
The exact limit of what the mind can truly claim to know threw
exciting new light on the working of human intelligence and stimulated
further debate and exploration through the fertility of its suggestions …
for example about the way in which ideas came to associated.
(Britannica, 1999:1)
Locke was concerned with liberating time from motion and any restrictive barrier. One of
his ideas about the perception of the human mind was the idea of duration. Man’s idea of duration
was the awareness of the interval between parts of the train of ideas. By awareness, man can
distinguish the duration of his own self and the duration of the objective world “time was a
convenient assumption, not an actuality”(Cash ,1955:133). Sterne was able to transfer the
intellectual ideas of Locke's theory to emotional and aesthetical text in the first modern novel.
Sterne's treatment of time was built on a careful calculation. He is regarded as an experimentalist.
Sterne's novel was influenced by Locke's" Essay of Duration and its Simple Modes" , which
explained that man's sense of time was derived from the train of ideas. Locke stated that:
It is evident to anyone who will but observe what passes in his own mind,
that there is a train of ideas which constantly succeed one another in
[man's] understanding . . . The distance between any parts of succession ,
or between the appearance of any two ideas in our minds, is what we call
duration(Locke,1950:106).
2.1. Tristram Shandy
The full title of this novel is The Life and Opinions of Gentleman Tristram Shandy. Sterne's
work concentrates on the intellectual adventure of the characters, rather than theirs actions.
Tristram Shandy has neither a beginning , middle, nor end. It starts in the year 1718 and
1713, and in the intern goes as far forward as 1766, and backward to the time of Henry VIII.
The novel elucidates that "everything was connected with everything. "Single life may be
seen as detachable from the world around it"(Probyn, 1987:138).
The novelist liberated himself from the old structure, plot, and the traditional eighteenth
century method of narration. He established a new order of time in fiction there is a
dissociation of time. He didn’t pay attention to the simple narration of time in a way to adopt
"(Probyn:140).
The novel is about small incidents that determines an individual’s life and works." Eventually,
the complexity of the actual state of the human mind as composed of memories of the present,
past, and of the future"(Probyn:1987:140). Unlike traditional eighteenth century novels, the
subjective time is essential in the novel. Apparently, Sterne tries to transmit his point of view
into a book, which encourages a modern attitude. The idea of private time was elevated by
Sterne. Qualitative time is based on the psychological life of the individual. He believed in the
subjective time. When human time is arbitrary, it doesn’t pay attention to ordinary logical
relations. It would be intelligible only as a duration .
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Tristram’s father forgets to wind the clock, that meant the sexual act which will eventually
produce the unfortunate Tristram is interrupted and the Homunculus takes disordered and
discontinuous route towards conception(Ibid:140) .
The novel opens with an account of the birth of the hero, it begins before the beginning .
The time is filled by an account of the conversation of his father and uncle Toby. Sterne allows
his character's mind to wonder freely from one topic to another as happens in a state of
reverie.(Probyn,1987:136)
2.2. Duality of Time in Tristram Shandy
The dilemma of time is explicitly raised in the novel. The narrator in the novel tries to
reveal the panorama of his consciousness field as it is present to him. It is presented as a
"simultaneity of past, present, and future is not as a series of one thing after another" (
Swearinger,1977:100).
The technique of time depends on the psychological time and duration rather than on
chorological one. It is based on the free association of ideas, whereby time is measured by
values not by the clock. In fact, the time of the clock is used only for contrast. A. A.
Mendilow thinks that the time of clock represents a contrast to psychological duration ,
because it has no validity in the world of feeling and thinking(Mendilow,1968:94).
Locke gave Sterne new principles of literary composition . Sterne considered it as a
true scholastic pendulum :
It is about an hour and a half's tolerable good reading since
my Uncle Toby rang the bell, when Obadiah was ordered to saddle a
horse, and go for Dr. Slop, the man- midwife, so that no one can say,
with reason that I have not allowed Obadiah enough [time], poetically
speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and come :
though morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time
to get on his boots . . . If the hypercritic will go upon this; . . . should take
upon himself to insult over me for such a breach in the unity of rather
probability of time; I would remind him that the idea of duration and its
simple modes is get merely from the train and succession of our idea and
is the true scholastic pendulum. (Sterne, BK.II.Ch.8.90)
Sterne intends to show the relationship between two kinds of time and the
reflection of the character. He tries to expose the complexity of Locke's theory, specially,
when the concept of time is discussed by the two brothers Toby and Walter Shandy. Toby
thinks that passion, hobby horses govern his world. Walter is concerned with theories and
systems: He"would move both heaven and earth, and twist and torture everything in nature
to support his hypothesis.". He is above the passion, but even his philosophy cannot prevent
him from observing that " it is two hours and ten minutes and no more . . . brother Toby- but
to [ his] imagination seems almost an age"( Sterne,BK.X.III.Ch.18.167) .
The mobility of time is governed by the psychological factor. Walter tries to connect
what happens to him with the succession of ideas. He gives a clear account of the matter by a
metaphysical explanation upon the concept of duration and its simple modes:
To understand what time is a right ,without which we can
comprehend
infinity… we ought seriously sit down and consider what idea it is we
came by it… for if you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind…
and observe attentively, you will perceive brother, that whilst you and
I are talking , and thinking… whilst we receive successively ideas in our
minds, we know that we do exist. ( BK. III.Ch.19)
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According to Walter ,man measures time by minutes, hours, weeks, and months, still
he" wishes there was not a clock in the kingdom"(BK.III.Ch.19.169). The novelist calls for the
clarity of time as novelists, critics, and philosophers have done, when he affirms the idea of "
poetic time", that is created by the mind of the character, of the narrator, and of the reader.
Man's sense of time would be evoked by the ideas that pass through his mind, and of the
association of ideas. The myth of time changes its form and becomes humanized. Henri Fluchere
comments that Eternity and instant become paradoxically one in the most humble, the least
philosophical individual consciousness (Fluchere,128).
Throughout Trisram 's attempt to know the exact year of the story of " Bohemia and His
Seven Castles". Uncle Toby gives a chance to choose any date: " . . . take any date in the whole
world thou choosest, and put it to . . . thou art heartily welcome"( BK. VIII. Ch.19. 510).Toby's
mind is over controlled by the idea of psychological time more than the physical one .Sterne
explores before the reader a line of consciousness . He exposes the activity of a mind with its
environment. His aim of writing is to live an ideal victory over time. In the final book, Tristram
engages in an apostrophe, this apostrophe is a mixture of abstraction , familiar sentimental ,
concrete images"(Ibid:127).
The awareness of time passage is explicitly manifested when "[ Tristram] is so acutely
aware of time, which destroys the moment"(Ghent,1953:93).He keeps his eyes on Jenny's
twisting her lock. "The utility of time is demonstrated by Jenny's presence, and gestures as she
twists her lock, that the sense of time finds profoundest significance”(Ibid:43).love is threatened
by the rapidity of time. Trisram compares the rushing of time with clouds of a windy day.
Jenny's hair turns gray as he watches , but he appreciates time only when Jenny is near :
Time wastes, too fast: every letter, I trace tells me which rapidity life
follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny!!
Then the tubie about they neck, are flying over our heads like light, clouds of
a windy day, never to return more – everything presses on – whilst thou art
twisting that clock see ! It grows grey ; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid
adieu , and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal
separation which we are shortly to make – Heaven have mercy upon us both !
(BK. IX, Ch.10. 558)
Sterne argues about the contradiction in human nature which is generated from a
consciousness of its existence in time together, with a quiet refusal to surrender to time's
Omnipotence.
3-Conclusion
Laurence Sterne was the first novelist to be aware of duration as a positive factor that
influenced man's mind. It played a part in the definition of his character(Tristram) . Tristram's
awareness aims at slowing the flow of time, though he abandons "clock time" in favored of
"thought time". Clock time has no meaning for the imagination, was artificial and arbitrary
convention that evolves for the purposes of social expediency, in order to regulate and to coordinate action.
The narrator Tristram depicts the passage of time and offers his narrative in the form of a
reading of his own life's temporal flow. Sterne emphasizes the domination of psychological time.
It is measured by a scholastic pendulum Locke's duration. Moreover, man lacks the ability to
know reality. His own experience and the reality of identity are transformed from the soul to the
separate and shifting ideas, which make up the content of the consciousness .
Shandyan philosophy is an elaboration of Locke's methods. The real Sternean conception of
time depends on the imagination and the individual consciousness. Man's sense of time is
numbered by his triumph over it. Particularly, when the sense of timelessness has a capacity to
transcend any given time scheme.
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4-Refrences
Allen , Brooke. " Laurence Sterne" . New Criterion . Vol.20 Iss.5 ( January 2002)
Cash, Arthur, H. " The Lockean Psychology of Tristram Shandy" . ELH. Vol.22
( 1955)
Freeman , John. " Delight in the Disorder of Things: Tristram Shandy and the
Dynamics of Genre". Studies in the Novel. Vol.34 Iss.2 (2002).
Fluchere, Henri. Laurence Sterne: From Tristram to York: An Interpretation of
Tristram Shandy . London : Oxford University Press, 1965.
Ghent, Dorothy, Van. The English Novel: Form and Function. New York:1953.
Karl, Frederick, R. A Reader's Guide to the Development of English Novel in the
th
18
Century . London : Thame & Hunderson, 1972.
Locke, John . An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by A. S.
Springle. Oxford : The Clarenden press , 1950.
Mendilow, A. A. " The Revolt of Sterne " in Luarence Sterne : A Collection of
Critical Essays . Edited by John Traugatt. New
York: Prentice Hall, 1968.
Probyn, Clive, T. English Fiction of Eighteenth Century, 1700- 1784. London :
Longman , 1987.
Sterne , Luarence. Tristram Shandy . New York: Random House, n. d.
Swearinger , James, E. Reflexivity in Tristram Shandy : An Essay in the Phenomenological
Criticism . London : Yale University Press, 1977 .
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