The treatment of time in Tristram Shandy

Lawrence Sternes most famous novel, entitled The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a preposterously comic
literary creation, is representative for the category of the realistic novel, the predominant form of literature in the
18th century which centres, as a major feature, on the relationship between the individual and the social
environment, reflecting the tensions and conflicts between private and individual convictions and ideas, and public
and social norms and conventions.
Tristram Shandy can be considered a non-conventional novel in what concerns various aspects, such as
outlook, language, structure, narrative strategies and the treatment of identity.
The entire structure of the novel folds on the principle of the spontaneous association of ideas, explained by
the main character himself in the beginning of the novel, in contrast to the illusion of linguistic transparency
postulated by the traditional literary works. Sternes novel was often called anti-novel, since its substance derives
from the fusion of traditional elements and new techniques. A profound understanding of the inner logic of the plot
requires the adjustment of the reading strategy, in order to follow the stream of consciousness, regarding the fact
that Tristram is concerned with rendering everything crossing his mind while setting out to tell the story of his life,
anticipating, for example, Virginia Woolfs later characters.
Between the stream of consciousness and the matter of time in Tristram Shandy can be drawn a deeply
close connection. The novel embodies endless series of digressions from the hard nucleus of the novel (represented
by the protagonists intention of assembling his autobiography), introduced by means of relating other stories,
conversations, explanations; consequently, the proper movement of the plot is very slow; for example, the moment
of the narrators birth is actually inserted only after the reader has covered almost a third of the novel. Time can be
imagined in Tristram Shandy in the form of a jelly-like ball, capable to extend or to diminish according to the
narrators flashbacks, due to which any past moment can become present.
The novel begins with Tristrams conception about the way in which a child ought to be begotten and
continues with an innocent remark of Tristrams mother about winding up the clock, which upsets the narrators
father, Walter, and determines him to loose his concentration, with a discussion on the signification of the
Homolunculus, which, in turn, embroils him in a discussion of his parents marriage contract, his uncle Toby, Parson
Yorick, the midwife and Dr. Slop, all of whom contribute, in one way or another, to the development of the
protagonists life. For Tristram, as for readers, the concatenation of circumstances, the pressure of a million
imponderable ideas and events, raises the problem of where his life and opinions really begin; only after about three
hundred pages, he decides that it really begins with the death of his brother.
Laurence Sterne uses not only the technique of flashbacks to render the vastness of his thoughts, but even,
as an innovation in prose and in the use of time as an organizational device, flashforwards, referring to events which
have not yet happened, by using verbs in past tenses. Both flashbacks and flashforwards often turn into digressions,
which the narrator claims are actually relevant for the further development of the story. This way, the story doesnt
follow one singular narrative thread, but turns out more and more complex, becoming true textual embroidery which
requests from the readers an involved lecture, sometimes difficult. The narrative fascicle gushes out in two
directions: the first is the plot sequence that includes Tristram's conception, birth, christening, and accidental
circumcision; the second major plot consists of the fortunes of Tristram's Uncle Toby.
The major theme of time takes two main forms within the novel: chronological and psychological. Time is
mostly perceived as duration, or dure, as Henri Bergson defined the subjective time, the appearance of time to our
sense of consciousness, which varies over wide limits.
In the first place, the time events take does not coincide with the narrators perception upon time. There is a
determined distinction between measurable time, whose units are not subdued to changes, and time conceived as a
human experience dominated by relativity. For instance, when Walter Shandy announces that two hours and ten
minutes have passed, while looking at his watch, Tristram confesses that to his imagination, it seemed almost an age,
transposing both the reader and the other characters in an atemporal dimension of imagination, which imposes no
limitations.
 In the second place, another feature of the treatment of time in Tristram Shandy is the suspension of time;
the narrator sometimes inserts his digressions into a moment of the characters' time, stopping their time while,
theoretically at least, providing information which furthers the "main story" of the novel. In Volume I, Uncle Toby's
reply to his brother is interrupted: "I think, replied my uncle Toby, taking his pipe from his mouth, and striking the
head of it two or three times upon the nail of his left thumb, as he began his sentence,I think, says he." Two pages
later, Tristram returns to Toby without any time having passed in Toby's world. In Volume II, time is briefly reversed,
and the reader is returned to Walter Shandys question, "What can they be doing, brother?" Only then does the
reader learn what Toby has to say. This delay has more profound repercussions in what concerns the details of the
story; in fact, it signals out the lack of comprehensibility between the characters, between Tristram Shandys father
and uncle Toby.
Time also constitutes one of the devices used in order to articulate the metafictional scheme of the novel. It
is both a subject Tristram and the other characters speculate about and a metafictional mirror which reflects two
kinds of perspective made iridescent by the readers: the first one is represented by the literal time of the reader,
measurable by the clock, and the second one is the reader's sense of how much (fictional) time has elapsed in the
lives of the characters; in the fictional time, the characters have performed actions requiring more than the mere
minutes of the reader's real time. For example, Tristram notes that it has taken the reader about ninety minutes to
read what happened since uncle Toby rang the bell and Obadiah left for Dr. Slop. The narrator asserts that, poetically
speaking, he has allowed Obadiah time enough both to come and go. Tristram goes onto acknowledge that no real or
chronological time may have elapsed: truly speaking, the character scarcely had time to get on his boots. Tristram
then addresses a literal-minded reader, whose objections he sets forth, in order to demolish their irrelevance to
fictional time.
Other time, Tristram refers to the time in which he is writing the novel, placing us in the room where he is
writing, telling us about the weather as he writes, describing his activities or what he is wearing as he writes, as
particular thoughts which he has just written down come to him, this very rainy day, March 26, 1759, and between
the hours of nine and ten in the morning". The year is, of course, the actual time when Sterne was writing this
volume. Or, the narrator tells us, "And here am I sitting, this 12th day of August, 1766, in a purple jerkin and yellow
pair of slippers, without either wig or cap on. Such intrusions of the narrator's time calls attention to the artificiality
of the novel and the fictionality of his characters, who yet are convincingly alive for the reader. They also raise the
question of the relationship of the actual writer (not the fictional persona) to his novel.