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The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction before Tristram Shandy

Author(s): Wayne C. Booth


Source: PMLA, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Mar., 1952), pp. 163-185
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/460093
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THE SELF-CONSCIOUS NARRATOR IN COMIC FICTION
BEFORE TRISTRAM SHANDY

By WAYNE C. BOOTH
I

ISTORICAL statements about Tristran Shandy have in the past


generally been hampered by critical misconceptions about the
book. As long as it was taken to be a farrago, the value of which depended
on a few lucky strokes on an otherwise haphazard and worthless canvas,
efforts to see it in its historical context were doomed to failure. In effect,
such a hodgepodge could have no important context. It was, as critics
and historians repeated endlessly, a mad, inexplicable thing, unreasoned
and unreasonable, having real kinship in literature only with other mad
books, most of them long since wisely forgotten. As a whole it was really
nothing, and consequently as a whole it could not be related to other
wholes. Thus, with the exception of such matters as the peculiar sentence
structure, the minute delineation of gesture, and the depiction of humor
and sentiment, there were really no artistic devices to be placed in a
historical context; all one could do was to place Sterne in the historical
stream of those who were delightfully inartistic.
Fortunately, these critical presuppositions are no longer generally
held. Nearly everyone has given up the once popular belief that Laurence
Sterne's writing methods are as chaotic as those of Tristram Shandy. Al-
though Tristram depended on Almighty God for his next move, Sterne,
most reputable critics now believe, depended on a reasonably elaborate
plan.1 Modern readers, in short, tend to see deliberate artistry where
earlier readers saw only whimsy. The historical problems of the book are
thus not only reopened; they are in a sense raised honestly for the first
time.
In considering the book as an artistic construction, it becomes evident
that its most important single device is the very element which led earlier
readers to overlook the artistry: the transforming presence of an intrud-
ing narrator. It is Tristram Shandy, the self-conscious narrator of his
own life story, who tears the book apart or, if one prefers, holds it to-
gether. Thus the historian must look not at the artless Sterne but at the
artless Tristram and his predecessors in his attempt to place the novel
in its true historical position. It is probably true that a dim sense of this
1 See James Aiken Work, Introd. to ed. of Tristram Shandy (New York, 1940); Rufus
Putney, "Laurence Sterne, Apostle of Laughter," The Age of Johnson, Essays presented to
C. B. Tinker (New Haven, 1949); Wayne Booth, "Did Sterne Complete Tristram Shandy?"
MP, xLvm (Feb. 1951), 172-183.

163

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164 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

led earlier historians to derive Tristram Shandy from Montaigne and


Burton and Swift, and from more obscure writers of "nonsense fiction" or
"facetiae" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all of whom wrote
books with obviously "Shandean" qualities. These must still be consid-
ered the most important influences on Sterne, but the nature of their
influence must be reconsidered. They did not teach Sterne how to be
chaotic; they taught him how to use a self-conscious narrator to salvage
order out of seeming chaos.2 As the following brief history will show, he
could have found the disruptive use of such a narrator more fully exem-
plified in much of the comic fiction read by him as he was maturing his
methods.

The range of devices and effects that might be considered as part of


the generic device of the intruding narrator is far too wide to be covered
here. In the first place, it is evident that in all written works there is
an implied narrator or "author" who "intrudes" in making the necessary
choices to get his story or his argument or his exposition written in the
way he desires. He decides to tell this story rather than any other story;
he employs this proof rather than any other possible proof. In short, he
writes "this" rather than "that," and is thus fully characterized as an
artist; he "intrudes" at every step, however unobtrusively. But this kind
of intrusion clearly cannot be treated as a single device.
A second kind of intrusion, also too general for discussion here, is
made by a narrator who uses himself as the subject or hero of his own ac-
count. Indeed, all first-person narrators, whether they make of them-
selves protagonists or merely secondary characters, "intrude" quite
explicitly, even though there may be no mention of the narrator's quali-
ties as a writer. Problems of the narrator's suitability for his task-the
probability of his knowing enough to tell the complete story, the likeli-
hood of his having the necessary skills, and so on-are pressed more
strongly on the reader, however inferentially, than in third-person ac-
counts.

A third kind of narrator, whether first- or third-person, indul


"rhetorical" commentary on the characters or events of his sto
order to induce appropriate attitudes in the reader. These comments
range from the simplest kind of weighted language ("This base
.."; "Our hero was . . ."; "Such a pure heart could hardly be expe
to...") to fairly extended commentary on the moral or intell
2 Discussion of these must be reserved for a later article, which will include Be
Le moyen de parvenir, Burton's Anatomy, Bruscambille's Prologues, John Dunt
Voyage Round the World, D'Urfey's An Essay Towards the Theory of the Intelligible
"Pilgrim Plowden's" Farrago, Francis Kirkman's The Unlucky Citizen, La Fo
Fables, Montaigne's Essays, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, Swift's A Tale o
Bouchet's Serees, and other relevant works.

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Wayne C. Booth 165

issues involved (e.g., Fielding's and Thackeray's moralizing interrup-


tions). Although this kind of intrusion is a step in the direction of the
kind most characteristic of Tristram, and is, in fact, frequently used by
him, it lacks the one essential quality which distinguishes the intrusions
which primarily concern us.
Our attention must be centered on the self-conscious narrator who
intrudes into his novel to comment on himself as writer, and on his book,
not simply as a series of events with moral implications, but as a created
literary product. Other kinds of intrusion will necessarily figure occa-
sionally in this account. But the crucial task is to determine the history
and uses of the narrator who, like Tristram, not only makes explicit for
the reader the technical decisions which in "normal" fiction are carried
on completely behind the scenes, but also portrays the activity of con-
structive response which successful readers must always make to the
offerings of any author.
II

It has long been customary in literary histories to say that Sterne was
influenced by Cervantes. Sterne himself frequently cites Don Quixote as
one of his models, and the striking similarities between Uncle Toby, with
his servant Trim, and Don Quixote, with his servant Sancho, have been
noted again and again as evidence for the relationship. But surely just
as striking, once one's attention is given to narrative methods, is the
fact that Don Quixote is really the first important novel using the self-
conscious narrator.3 Indeed, Cervantes developed the device to a point
not reached by any other comic novelist until well into the eighteenth
century.
Although the intrusions themselves are infrequent, the narrator who
makes them is about as fully characterized, particularly in the prefaces,
as a narrator could be.

You may depend upon my bare Word, Reader, without any farther Security,
that I cou'd wish this Offspring of my Brain were as ingenious ... as your self
could desire; but . . . Nature will have its Course: Every Production must re-
semble its Author, and my barren and unpolish'd Understanding can produce
nothing but what is very dull, very impertinent, and extravagant beyond
Imagination.4 (p. xix)

3 The most interesting pre-Cervantian use of intrusion in fiction occurs in Thomas


Nashe's Jack Wilton (1594); see esp. "The Induction to the dapper Mounsier Pages of the
Court." It is perhaps self-evident that this survey of the self-conscious narrator cannot be
exhaustive. Nor is there any effort to show that Sterne knew individual works, though in
fact it is certain that he knew most of them.
4 The Life and Atchievements of the Renown'd Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Peter
Motteux, rev. John Ozell (London, 1719). Sterne owned the 1743 edition; my page refer-
ences are to the Modern Library reprint of this revision (New York, 1930).

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166 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

I had a great Mind to have expos'd it [his book] as naked as it was born, with-
out the Addition of a Preface. . . For I dare boldly say, that tho' I bestow'd
some Time in writing the Book, yet it cost me not half so much Labour as this
very Preface. I very often took up my Pen, and as often laid it down, and could
not for my Life think of any thing to the Purpose. Sitting once in a very studious
Posture, with my Paper before me, my Pen in my Ear, my Elbow on the Table,
and my Cheek on my Hand, considering how I should begin.... [I] had made
my self so uneasy about it, that I was now resolv'd to trouble my Head no fur-
ther either with Preface or Book, and even to let the Atchievements of that noble
Knight remain unpublish'd: For, continu'd I, why shou'd I expose my self to
the Lash of the old Legislator, the Vulgar? (p. xx)

Here we have a fully self-conscious narrator whose qualities determine


the quality of his book in spite of his playfully professed desires, and we
see him at his desk as intimately as we ever see Tristram.
The most important of the actual intrusions into the narrative proper
is the trick with Cid Hamet Benengeli. The narrator of the prefaces is not
the first-hand narrator of any of the actual events, although we do not
learn this until the end of Book I:

But here we must deplore the abrupt End of this History, which the Author
leaves off just at the very Point when the Fortune of the Battle is going to be
decided, pretending that he could find nothing more recorded of Don Quixote's
wondrous Atchievements than what he had already related. However, the second
Undertaker of this Work could not believe, that so curious a History could lie
for ever inevitably buried in Oblivion; or that the Learned of La Mancha were
so regardless of their Country's Glory, as not to preserve [it] ....
As I said before, the Story remain'd imperfect .... This vex'd me extremely,
and turn'd the Pleasure, which the Perusal of the Beginning had afforded me,
into Disgust.... (p. 51)

Only through diligent inquiry is he able to discover the manuscript of


"an Arabian Historiographer, Cid Hamet Benengeli," which completes
the story: "As for this History, I know 'twill afford you as great Variety
as you cou'd wish . . . and if in any Point it falls short of your Expecta-
tions, I am of Opinion 'tis more the Fault of the Infidel its Author, than
the Subject" (p. 55).
This Benengeli is used as a desultorily intruding narrator throughout
the rest of the book, although the story he narrates is always seen
through the eyes of the second narrator: "Cid Hamet Benengeli, an
Arabian and Manchegan Author, relates in this most grave, high-sound-
ing ... History, that . . ." (p. 151).
But beyond the relative subtlety of this initial trick, these two nar-
rators engage only rarely in any play with narrative conventions. Per-
haps the most advanced step in Tristram's direction comes at the begin-

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Wayne C. Booth 167

ning of Part II, where Cervantes introduces the character Carrasco-


later to become more and more important in the story proper-who takes
the narrator to task for his errors in Part I. This produces, inferentially,
a kind of intrusion by the narrator who is under attack. When Carrasco
accuses Benengeli of having bungled the disappearance and recovery of
Sancho's ass, Sancho says, "As to that ... I don't know very well what
to say. If the man made a Blunder, who can help it? But mayhaps 'twas
a Fault of the Printer" (p. 468). And when Carrasco accuses Benengeli
of writing only for money: "What, quoth Sancho, does he design to do
it to get a Penny by it? nay, then we are like to have a rare History in-
deed; we shall have him botch and whip it up ... ; for your hasty Work
can never be done as it should be. Let Mr Moor take care how he goes
to work; for, my Life for his, I and my Master will stock him with such a
Heap of Stuff in Matter of Adventures and odd Chances, that he'll have
enough not only to write a Second Part, but an Hundred" (p. 469). This
section of the novel has little function in the story as a whole; yet the act
of intrusion, the self-conscious discussion of the story itself, is integrated
into the actions of the main characters, who themselves comment on the
skill of their "author." This device was, I think, never used by any other
novelist until after Sterne. But it is essentially the same as Tristram's
involved discussion of what he can do or what he has done or might have
done with his story: characters in both books comment on the story in
which they appear, and the narrator in both cases reveals his intense
awareness of himself as narrator. This is true even though he does not,
in Cervantes, intrude explicitly at this point and even though the effects
of the devices are thus quite different in the two works.
Benengeli does, on occasion, intrude explicitly, performing in public
the tasks which most writers perform behind the scenes, discussing
openly those relations with his reader which most narrators leave un-
expressed. At the conclusion of Part II, for example, the second narrator
says: "Here the sagacious Cid Hamet addressing himself to His Pen, 0
thou my slender Pen, says he, thou, of whose Knib . . . I dare not speak
my Thoughts! . . .remain upon this Spit-Rack where I lodge thee.
There may'st thou claim a Being many Ages, unless presumptuous and
wick'd Historians take thee down to profane thee. But e'er they lay
their heavy Hands on thee . . . tell 'em ... For Me alone was the Great
Quixote born, and I alone for Him.... And thou, Reader... advise
him [the author of the spurious second part] likewise to let the wearied,
mouldring Bones of Don Quixote, rest quiet in the Earth.... Adieu"
(pp. 935-936).
A detailed reading of all such passages in the book can leave little
doubt that it is primarily to this aspect that Sterne refers when he talks

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168 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

of his master Cervantes, even though the actual intrusions in Don Quix-
ote never attain to the level of Tristram's involved conversations with a
highly characterized reader. Indeed, no other novelist until Marivaux
approached as closely as Cervantes to the genuine Shandean manner.
Most comic writers of the next century were quite satisfied with the
straightforward, unself-conscious narrative manner conventional with
writers of serious works. Those few authors who really exploited nar-
rative possibilities did not, in the main, write works properly to be con-
sidered as comic fiction but rather wrote facetiae or satires; for example,
the most important work using self-conscious narration in English be-
fore Fielding was undoubtedly Swift's A Tale of a Tub. This is not, how-
ever, to say that the intruding narrator was dead. There were dozens of
works which imitated Cervantes' devices, although most of them, like
Sorel's Francion (1622-41), confined the interest in the narrator to in-
troductory material (see Books I, vIr, and x).
The most highly intrusive of the exceptions before 1700 was Fure-
tiere's Le Roman Bourgeois (1666, translated as Scarron's City Romance,
1671). This work has, in addition to an intimate "Epistle" to the reader,
a sprinkling of commentary on the narrator's problems. In one respect
it outdoes Don Quixote: one is made to feel that the order of events is
transformed merely to portray the whimsical narrator and thus to
parody conventional narration. "I am afraid there is not any Reader
(be he never so courteous) but will cry out here is a pitiful Romancer.
This Story is neither long nor intricate, and a Wedding resolved already,
which is not wont to be till the 10th Volume; but I beg his pardon for
cutting short, and riding post to the conclusion . . yet he may please
to observe that many things fall between the Cup and Lip: and this
Wedding is not in such forwardness as he imagines. It is now in my power
to form here a Heroine that shall be stollen away, as often as I have a
mind to write Volumns . . ." (p. 19). As this quotation suggests, the
interest is frequently shifted to a hypothetical "reader" and his demands
upon the narrator: "But now I am afraid the Reader expects the Latter
Part of this Book should be the Continuation of the former, and necessar-
ily depend upon it; in which he extreamly mistakes.... [I] leave the
care of their connection to him that binds the Book" (pp. 159-160).
This radical flouting of tradition is at times carried to great lengths in
extended conversations between narrator and reader. But the most suc-
cessful thrust at convention is the narrator's conclusion. With his hero
still pursuing his heroine, he stops to tell the story of the hare that had
been promised by the Gods never to be caught, pursued by the hound
that had been promised never to fail in the chase. They are running still,
he tells us, just as are his hero and heroine. This final joke, together with

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Wayne C. Booth 169

all of the narrative play, particularly the shift from one story to another
in the middle of the work, makes of the book as a whole a trick played
by the narrator on the reader, just as in a sense Tristram Shandy is an
elaborate evasion of the promise given in the title.
A much better foreign work, but one of less significance to this history,
was Scarron's Roman Comique.5 Its relatively few intrusions are given
importance by the use of an unusually full characterization in the
Dedication, "To the Courteous Reader that never saw me":
Unknown Friend, who never saw'st me in thy Life, and perhaps never troublest
thy self much about it, because there is no great matter to be got by the sight
of such a Fellow as I am: Be it known to thee, that neither am I desirous thou
shouldst see my Person, but that I have been inform'd that some facetious
Gentlemen ... describe me another sort of a Monster than really I am . . . and
for that reason [I] have order'd my Picture to be engraven, as thou seest it, in
the beginning of this Book.... Thou wilt grumble in thy Gizzard, I say, and
snarl, and quarrel, and huff, and puff, because forsooth, I shew thee my Back-
side. But prithee, old Friend, don't be too Cholerick....

It is surprising that such a promising Shandean character, portrayed


over several pages, is never really used as an effective element in the
body of the work; he could have been very useful in relieving those pas-
sages in the romance part of the plot which tend to become much too
serious for the over-all comic effect. But the intrusions, when they come,
are almost always simple devices for pleasant transition between chap-
ters: "And whilst the Hungry Beasts were feeding, the Author rested a
while, and bethought himself what he should say in the next Chapter"
(p. 3). Only occasionally, in attempting explicit parody, does the nar-
rator comment specifically on his methods (e.g., p. 23). Once, however,
this commentary introduces something entirely new, at a point in the
novel when the reader needs some reassurance that the author knows
what he is doing.:
I am too much a Man of Honour not to advertise the courteous Reader, that
he be offended at all the silly Trifles he has already found in this Book, he will d
well not to go on with the reading of it; for, upon my Conscience, he must expec
nothing else, altho' the Volume should swell to the Bigness of that of the Gran
Cyrus: and if from what he has read, he doubts what will follow, perhaps I a
in the same Quandary as well as he: For one Chapter draws on another, and I d
with my Book as some do with their Horses, putting the Bridle on their Neck
and trusting to their good Conduct. But perhaps I have a fix'd Design, and
without filling my Chapters with Examples for Imitation, shall instruct wit

6 Part I, 1651; Part iI, 1657. First translated, 1676. Tr. by "Mr. Tho. Brown, Mr. Savage,
and Others" as The Comical Romance (London, 1700). My references are to the 1712 edi
tion of this translation.

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170 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

Delight after the same Manner as a drunken Man creates in us an Aversion for
Drunkenness, and yet may sometimes divert us with his merry Impertinence.
Let's end this Moral Reflection and return. (p. 40)

This claim to method in madness, which I have been unable to discover


in any previous work in just this form, became a fairly standard element
in comic narration, and it was carried to its fullest possible development
by Sterne. But in general Scarron only adumbrates devices that Sterne
could have learned much more about from later writers.6
The same is true of Congreve in Incognita: or, Love and Duty Recon-
cil'd (London, 1700). Although he employed a new element in his several
elaborate and clever "apologies" for digressions, his narrator is given no
consistent characterization. He does not intrude frequently nor trans-
form his story in so doing, and conversations between him and his
"reader" are only occasionally used (pp. 21, 24, 38, 39, 52, etc.). So that,
although it is the most "advanced" of English novels before Fielding, it
is still far behind the continental tradition.
Thus, although the device of the intruding narrator had not been
developed very fully in any fiction by 1700, compared to its development
by that time in other kinds of literature or to its later development in
fiction, it had been used successfully by Cervantes, Scarron, Furetiere,
and Congreve for comic ornament and for incidental parody of more
serious writers. But their relatively skillful usage had little effect on
comic writers generally. In England the "facetious" style was perhaps
considered best fit for foreigners; at any rate, Congreve's lead-perhaps
because his novel was never widely read-was not followed by English
novelists, and from 1700 until Joseph Andrews was published in 1741 no
English work of fiction had much more characterization of the narrator
than could be squeezed into prefatory matter or a few introductory
pages. Even in the majority of foreign comic works there were few signs of
interest in the comic possibilities of the self-conscious narrator. In Gil
Bias (1715), for example, where the first-person narration would seem to
invite intrusion, there is practically no explicit commentary by the hero
on his own writing abilities, methods, or problems. But if Lesage had
written his book twenty-five years later, he could hardly have avoided
the temptation to make of Gil Bias an intruding narrator; by that time
another French novelist, Marivaux, had transformed the history of fic-
tion by showing what could be done with intrusions.

III

Marivaux' novels are superior to most earlier comic fiction in

6 For further outstanding intrusions see pp. 99-100, 160, 203, 208, 212, 242,

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Wayne C. Booth 171

regard. Perhaps only Cervantes can claim a position of greater importance


in the history of the European novel before Fielding.7 He is important to
Sterne and to other novelists because of his experiments with sentiment
and with the combination of sentiment and ridicule. He is important for
his pre-Richardsonian explorations of psychological detail; indeed, inter-
est in his relationship with Richardson has obscured other aspects of his
genius, at least for English readers and critics. But it is in his realization
of the potentialities of the intruding narrator that he is perhaps most
important to the history of fiction.
His earliest significant novel, Le Paysan Parvenu (1735-36), although
probably very important to Fielding as a source for Joseph Andrews,
shows only vague promise of the narrative subtlety to come in his later
works. At the beginning of the book (especially pages two and six) there
are signs that he is going to play with the writing problem, but there is
almost no later intrusion of any interest.
But in Pharsamon, ou les Folies Romanesques (1737),8 which is a third-
person narrative concerning the romance-crazed exploits of a young and
modern Don Quixote in search of amorous knightly adventure, Marivaux
fully exploits the devices of intrusion for the first time in the history of
comic fiction. It is impossible to exaggerate either the excellence of these
intrusions or their probable influence on Fielding and Sterne. Not only is
the whole work narrated in a delightfully ironic manner very similar to
Fielding's, but all of the tricks of narrative intrusion characteristic of
Fielding are used. Indeed, many of the conversations between narrator
and reader go far beyond those we shall see when we come to Fielding,
and approach more nearly the facetious Tristram than the august, ironic,
controlled narrator used by Fielding.
The historical importance of these intrusions can of course be felt only
in a complete reading of the work. They are ideally designed to supple-
ment the fundamental parody of the whole; the narrative tradition be-
comes the object of ridicule, as the narrator defends his own absurd
practices or attacks other authors, depending on his mood.9 As in Sterne,
the effect of unconventional, seemingly spontaneous narration is here
achieved primarily by characterizing the narrator and his methods and
7 This statement is certainly open to dispute, like all statements about influence, whether
particular or general. But I think a careful reading of Marivaux' novels from the point of
view of what Fielding could have learned only from them must confirm Fielding's own
opinion when he lists Marivaux and Cervantes as the sole novelists among his major in-
fluences (Tom Jones xuI.i). The other writers listed are Aristophanes, Lucian, Rabelais,
Moli6re, Shakespeare, and Swift.
8 Trans. J. Lockman, Pharsamond, or, The New Knight-Errant (London, 1750).
9 There is explicit parody of La Calprenede's Faramond, but the whole tradition of the
romances is the true object of most of the ridicule.

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172 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

physical surroundings with great particularity, by doing the same for


the "reader" or "readers," and then, on the highest level of unconven-
tionality, by throwing the two together in intimate conversation.
Sometimes the "reader" is merely impatient to get the whole thing
over with; sometimes he demands a particular kind of conventional se-
quence (I, 293). Almost invariably he is in some way a "critic": "What
does this heedless scribbler himself mean? will a young impetuous reader
cry" (I, 322; see also II, 28 et passim). But these "readers" do not raise
objections merely to be answered and dismissed. Like Sterne's readers,
as distinct from most of Fielding's, they are made to "determine" the
course of the events and the manner of their telling: "Dispatch quickly,
(cries a critic;) you left our lovers languishing, and pale as ghosts, and
for what? why truly to tire us with a dissertation on the cause of their
impulses, and the number of them. But is this any thing to the purpose?
Let us therefore know what became of our heroic couple.-The critic is
in the right . . ." (I, 293).
But even more important than these pretended objections by the
"reader" in diverting the story from its ostensible course are the nar-
rator's pretended inadequacies and whimsies: "But I have moraliz'd
enough, on occasion of a little chit-chat between two women: and if I
take the liberty to write what comes uppermost; and to change my style,
according as the subjects I am writing upon happen to please me, I there-
in follow my own taste; and so far is natural.... But why am I so idle,
as to mention myself, and my own humour, on this occasion? I will con-
fess, (gentle reader,) that I am quite silly for so doing. You wou'd not
forgive me, except for the sake of my negligence, which you find to be
my darling passion. However, I hope to give no opportunity of making
such objections for the future" (II, 122).
As in Sterne, the greatest transformation comes when both reader
and narrator become involved in intimate interchange. It is evident, if we
compare these sections (e.g., I, 137-138, 229-230, 316) with Tristram's
intrusions, that there are many elements in common: reliance on chance,
comparison of the book to a hazardous journey, suggested profundity
beneath superficial folly, and so on. And although these interpolated
conversations are clearly interpolations, and never attain the quantity
and effect attained in Tristram Shandy, where the entire story is trans-
formed, they approach to such transformation. In Volume II they fre-
quently extend to two or more pages, during the reading of which the
interest in the story is largely replaced by interest in its narration. At
one point, the dialogue goes on for four pages in the following fashion:
How dull a character is that of Clito, whenever he is made to spin out his dis-
course to so tedious a length? (will some grave reader cry, whose stomach the

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Wayne C. Booth 173

apples have sower'd;) and how greatly am I oblig'd to the guests, for saving us
from the remainder of his tale!-Harkee, reader. I cou'd take upon me to defend
the story...
But, gentle reader, I shall not take upon me to say, that you yourself are in
the wrong to imagine this part of my work dull; at least I won't tell you so, what-
ever I myself may think. Your finding it heavy may, perhaps, be my fault, per-
haps your's; which is all I will observe on this head, whence you cannot fail of
concluding me extremely modest ...
I am no author, I declare to you once again. I trifle away my time in telling
you a parcel of fictitious tales; but this, (let me observe,) is better than being
quite idle. Let us therefore proceed.-Our whole company are now got to bed.
'Tis three in the morning, with regard to them; but 'tis no more than nine at
night with respect to myself; for which reason, I'll bring them all into action
again, as tho' they had snor'd away the four and twenty hours round.
Up! up!-I am instantly obey'd.... They have slept till they are sober, but
find themselves a little tir'd. (iI, 114-117)

This playful commentary on the relationship between duration in real


life and in fiction was not to be equalled until Tristram used the critic to
get Uncle Toby and Walter off the stairs.
Thus, although in Pharsamon such elements as the physical portrayal
of the writer at his writing task and the physical location of the reader as
he reads were present only in fragmentary form, even Sterne can hardly
be said to use any major trick of intrusion not already at least suggested
in this book. The major exception is the result of the third-person narra-
tion: there is no suggestion that the book is the product, in its entirety,
of its own subject matter, as Tristram's book is the product of his own
character as portrayed in the book. But this device, which could hardly
have been used for a comic protagonist like Pharsamon, who must not
be endowed with any verbal self-consciousness if he is to serve as a con-
vincing burlesque of romance heroes, was partially developed by Mari-
vaux in La Vie de Marianne (1731-41).1? This novel was written and
published serially in the form of a long communication from the heroine
to an unnamed friend. The authoress carefully describes herself as know-
ing nothing about writing problems or style (I, 2-3) and then proceeds,
in the most delightfully self-revealing style imaginable, to write her com-
munications, with many interruptions, many commentaries on her diffi-
culties as a writer, and many personal conversations with her corre-
spondent. Thus the novel is, among other things, an extremely clever
and subtle study in the psychology of the authoress, who, in the course of
making comments on her problems as a narrator, portrays herself much
10 The first 11 of 12 parts were translated as The Life of Marianne: or, The Adventures of
the Countess of... (London, 1736-42). My references are to the Dublin reprint of the
London translation, 1742.

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174 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

more intimately than was conventional, or even possible, in a novel


narrated without intrusions. As a result, the peculiar "sentimental"
quality of the major events of the novel is rendered both more poignant
and more "comic": the heroine, who in her quality as heroine is morally
sympathetic, in her quality as eccentric narrator is, while still sympa-
thetic, intellectually ridiculous. She is ignorant of the tricks of her trade;
she quite charmingly confesses her ignorance, and in doing so she renders
herself not only more credible and interesting, since more human, but
also more sympathetic, since so disarmingly honest.l
There is one minor device of Shandean intrusion which we have not
encountered before: the use of elaborate delaying tactics before deliver-
ing promised material. At the beginning of Part 6, Marianne promises for
the second time her "history of the nun." At the end of that part, she
says: "I shall tell you the rest in my seventh part, which, the first two
pages excepted, shall begin with the history of my nun, which I did not
think was still so far off, when I began this sixth part" (I, 322). But Part
7 again deals only with herself, and it concludes with another promise for
the story of the nun (II, 58). Only after Part 8 has been under way for
some time is the nun's story finally begun. This is certainly an embryonic
form of the devices Tristram uses for delaying crucial matter (especially
his "choicest morsel," Uncle Toby's amours) and arousing suspense at
the same time.
It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of such trickery in
forming the narrative practice of Fielding and ultimately of Sterne. In
Marivaux can be found everything of this sort ever used by Fielding
except the playful chapter headings, which Fielding undoubtedly de-
veloped from the practice of Cervantes and Lesage. And as for Sterne,
one could almost say that his whole experiment consists in combining
the narrator of Pharsamon and the narrative situation of Marianne
(the author writing his own book and commenting on it), and carryi
everything to extremes. Marivaux did not go to extremes, and the r
sult is that his works, like Fielding's, remain essentially undisturbed
these devices. The narrator, however intrusive, is always at least gene
ally functional, subordinate to the demands of the unifying story; h
interruptions usually can be seen to contribute in some way to the telling
of the story, or to the reader's acceptance of the story. In Sterne, th

1 Examples of this are to be found throughout Marianne (e.g., I, 15, 57, 83, 159, 272; n
58, 182). The following is typical: "It would perhaps be much better not to mention
these little particulars; but I write as well as I can. I must not think that I am makin
book, for that would discompose my mind too much. I rather chuse to fancy my self co
versing with you, because what passes in conversation is tolerable. Let us then procee
(I, 30).

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Wayne C. Booth 175

is not true. The methods of Marivaux have been carried beyond their
original intent, and have produced something which is, however difficult
to describe and however closely derived from earlier experiments, new.

IV

With the work of Marivaux in mind, we should not be surprised that


Henry Fielding's phrase on the title page of Joseph Andrews (1741),
"Written in Imitation of the Manner of CERVANTES, Author of Don
Quixote," tells only a very small part of the story of the narrative manner
of his first novel. The phrase, which does summarize fairly well his
practice in some matters-e.g., the character of Parson Adams-and
which indicates his sense of indebtedness for many aspects of the idea
of the comic prose epic, does not account for the role Fielding assigns to
his narrator. For in Joseph Andrews the intrusions of the narrator, his
characterization, and his discussion with the "reader" are carried far
beyond anything to be found in Cervantes. They are carried so far here
and in Tom Jones (1749) that one is justified in reopening the question
of the relationship between Fielding and Sterne.
The traditional account is that Fielding had carried the conventional
novel as far as it could be carried, along the lines of formal construction,
and that Sterne, using suggestions from earlier "nonsense fiction,"
liberated or transformed the novel from the rigidity it would have suf-
fered if Fielding's influence had gone unchallenged. As Ernest A. Baker
says:
No sooner was fiction provided primarily by Fielding with a structural form and
a set of canons firmly co-ordinated, than the form began to be knocked to pieces
and the canons flouted. The freakish deviations from the norm typified by
Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey were not, however, a thing entirely
new, but on the contrary a revival of nondescript kinds of fiction that had been
common enough before Richardson and Fielding took hold of the novel and put
it in order. Nonsense fiction had been much in vogue during the sixteenth cen-
tury. The one towering classic among the facetious writers was Rabelais; but
there were also minor classics-Beroalde de Verville . . . Bruscambille ...
Bouchet... and other Frenchmen, not excepting the more moder author
Le Paysan Parvenu ... whose marivaudage was a kindred variety of humou
Swift's fictions belonged to this class, and more recently the mock-biography
Martinus Scriblerus had appeared in print about the same time as the first w
of Richardson and Fielding. Goldsmith, Brooke ... and others ... were to
up the practice of unorthodox fiction, after Sterne had demonstrated the inf
malleability of the novel and its aptness for any impression that the han
genius might think fit to give it.l1

12 The History of the English Novel, iv (London, 1930), 240. See also Sherburn's ac
in Albert C. Baugh et al., A Literary History of England (New York, 1948), p. 1024

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176 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

Now without minimizing the importance to Sterne of the writers of


"nonsense fiction,"13 I would suggest that it is a gross oversimplification
to say that Fielding gave to the novel a "structural form" of the kind
"knocked to pieces" by Sterne. The Fieldingesque is a complex quality
produced by many skills, only one of which is a willingness to employ
what is usually meant by form or structure, that is, a consistently worked-
out intrigue which has no obvious loose ends and which could be drama-
tized. Certainly an equally important element is the use of a character-
ized, self-conscious narrator in a way that helps to determine the true
form, as distinct from the mere intrigue, of his novels. This form, how-
ever, was far too great, in all its ramifications, to allow for easy imitation;
in his formal excellence Fielding did not establish a real tradition at all,
either immediately or later in the century. Although the question of
Fielding's formal skill is not primary to this study, it is important to
realize that none of the novels written in the fifties, after Tom Jones
and before Tristram Shandy, even approached the formal excellence of
Tom Jones, in spite of all the avowals of indebtedness to Fielding. This
is, I suppose, generally taken for granted, since no one has pretended
that the imitations of Fielding in this decade are worth reading. But
because these novels have not been read, a second fact, equally impor-
tant, has been overlooked. Most of the novelists of this period did imitate
Fielding, but they imitated his devices without copying-because it was
beyond them-his skill in using his devices functionally; as we shall see
below, they copied primarily his prefatory material, his intrusions, and,
on the lowest level of all, his chapter headings, implanting them into
their novels with almost complete disregard for artistic function.
Thus in a sense the novel never had any "canons" of form established,
even before Sterne, since Fielding's chief impact on the novel was to
make it more diffuse, less unified than it had been in his own hands and
in the hands of his immediate predecessors. The very devices Sterne
uses to emphasize his ostensible chaos, and thus to "explode the novel,"
were merely extensions of what everyone was borrowing from Fielding.
The whole tendency throughout the fifties was really one of increasing
disorganization, with ornamental intrusions used in ever more disruptive
ways. Fielding was thus an important ancestor of Sterne, in this regard
as in so many others, and he was himself a descendant of some of the
ancestors Sterne was supposed to be using in rebellion against him.
Indeed, every form of intrusion in Tristram Shandy is, I think, avail-

13 To class together as "nonsense" or "facetious" works the books of Rabelais, Beroalde,


Bouchet, Marivaux and Swift is rather unfortunate, especially since it is clear from other
references that marivaudage, even for Baker, has nothing to do with the one quality these
writers do have in common: an elaborate use of the self-conscious narrator.

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Wayne C. Booth 177

able in Fielding's works. The gross differences between the total effects
of the two works, and between particular effects of the devices within
the works, tend to obscure this fact, because the total impression de-
rived from the intrusions of Fielding's narrator is that he knows where he
is going, whereas Tristram ostensibly does not. Fielding's narrator,
although he intrudes with a frequency which is not realized except when
one reads his book with this aspect specifically in mind, is never over-
whelmed by his problems; rather, he is omniscient and omnipotent.
He never doubts his own ability to tell his story or to move the reader
any way he pleases. However whimsical he may choose to appear on
occasion, he leaves no doubt that his intrusions are always carefully
employed to serve the requirements of his book as a whole. In short,
Fielding's narrative devices are usually functional rather than merely
ornamental. Tristram, on the other hand, always presents two opposite
aspects to his readers, the most obvious being that he has not the slightest
idea of what is going on, or of how to control it. His intrusions on this
level thus have the effect of seeming merely ornamental: the "story"
seems to be hindered rather than helped by them. His opposite claim,
that he has transcendental insight and will somehow miraculously make
order out of all his chaos, is repeated so much less frequently, and seems
so thoroughly confuted by everything he does, that readers have tended
to ignore it. They have thus ignored both the signs that the intrusions
are, in fact, functional and carefully planned, and the striking similarities
between Sterne's and Fielding's narrative devices.
The first step in reassessing the relationship between the two writers
is of course a detailed consideration of Sterne's devices as they appear
in Fielding. There is some reason to believe that the sheer quantity of
Fielding's intrusions was an important element in determining his in-
fluence, but since our interest is primarily in the quality of the inter-
ventions, and since even a great number of them would perhaps have
had little effect if they had not been qualitatively successful, relatively
limited examples of the major kinds of intrusion and their effects may
suffice.
Perhaps the intrusions which are most clearly functional are those
which are used to characterize the potential readers morally, and to
manipulate the real readers into the moral attitudes Fielding desires.
"There are two sorts of people, who, I am afraid, have already conceived
some contempt for my hero on account of his behavior to Sophia ..."
(Tom Jones Iv.vi). At times this moral manipulation becomes, just as it
does later in Tristram Shandy, very effective indeed: "Examine your
heart, my good reader, and resolve whether you do believe these matters
with me. If you do, you may now proceed to their exemplification in the

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178 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

following pages: if you do not, you have, I assure you, already read more
than you have understood ... To treat of the effects of love to you,
must be as absurd as to discourse on colours to a man born blind; since
possibly your idea of love may be as absurd as that which we are told
such blind men once entertained of the colour scarlet . . . love probably
may, in your opinion, very greatly resemble a dish of soup or a sirloin
of roast-beef" (vi.i). It would take a strong-minded reader to resist this
kind of rhetoric and to refuse to "believe these matters." And such
rhetoric is often needed, since Tom's conduct frequently becomes
imprudent that most readers, unaided by the narrator, might fin
difficult to remember the real virtue that prompts his actions. If
are to sympathize with the generous, open-hearted and affectionate her
we must be goaded into the camp of those who admire such qualit
more than they deplore imprudence or minor violations of conventi
moral codes. The narrator thus affects an intimacy with us at eve
crucial point throughout the story of Tom's actions, and forestalls
criticism we might wish to offer.
A more frequent, though perhaps less necessary, function of the
trusions, especially in Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, is that of insuri
a comic response to scenes which in themselves are not necessarily comi
or which are even potentially serious. These intrusions are thus sup
mental to many other devices of narration which are used to effect
same ends. For example, just after Adams has awaked and fled the
hounds, and just before Joseph gives them battle, the narrator intrudes
to say:
Nor let this be any detraction from the bravery of his character: let the number
of the enemies, and the surprise in which he was taken, be considered; and if there
be any modern so outrageously brave that he cannot admit of flight in any cir-
cumstance whatever, I say (but I whisper that softly, and I solemnly declare
without any intention of giving offence to any grave man in the nation), I say,
or rather whisper, that he is an ignorant fellow ... he is unacquainted with the
history of some great men living, who, though as grave as lions, ay, as tigers,
have run away .... But if persons of such heroic disposition are a little offended
at the behavior of Adams, we assure them they shall be as much pleased with
what we shall immediately relate of Joseph Andrews. (Joseph Andrews III.vi)

Before the most "serious" point of the episode is reached, Fielding's


narrator addresses a delightful apostrophe to the muse of Gulliver, asking
for assistance where his own powers as a writer are inadequate. All this,
coupled with the burlesque style of the battle account itself, would be
enough to render the events comic even if Fanny herself were the object
of the attack. Indeed, analogous devices are used in succeeding scenes

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Wayne C. Booth 179

to carry the reader laughing through Fanny's own abduction and near
ravishment.
In all of this, the narrator's qualities as a writer are only implicitly
involved. But it is in those many intrusions which discuss directly the
narrator's procedures as narrator that we are most interested. Many of
them resemble Tristram's intrusions closely, although when Fielding's
narrator digresses, he does so much more deliberately than Tristram,
and is, in fact, not really digressing at all. Indeed, one effect of the
majority of the intrusions throughout Tom Jones is to reinforce every
impression given by the story itself that the narrator is a man of great
genius and that the book is something new and wonderful. Sometimes
the playful commentary merely brings into the open processes which the
reader normally is left to perform for himself in private, suggesting that
the narrator is sufficiently clever to forestall the reader at every turn
(e.g., II.ix and III.i). At other times the commentary playfully dispar-
ages previous writers (e.g., xI.viii). And sometimes it is made up of
mock attacks on the reader, previous narrators, or the narrator himself
as a man, but always with the implication that as a writer he is a man of
consummate skill: "We would bestow some pains here in minutely de-
scribing all the mad pranks which Jones played . . .could we be well
assured that the reader would take the same pains in perusing them;
but as we are apprehensive that, after all the labour which we should
employ in painting this scene, the said reader would be very apt to skip
it entirely over, we have saved ourselves that trouble. To say the truth,
we have, from this reason alone, often done great violence to the luxuri-
ance of our genius, and have left many excellent descriptions out of our
work which would otherwise have been in it" (xII.iii).
Even the long introductory chapters, which perhaps run the most
danger of being considered merely ornamental, almost always can be
readily seen to contribute to the real form of the two. works in which
they occur. Without discussing these functions in detail, it is evident
that these prefaces vary considerably in the degree of service they per-
form. Many of them are functional only in the sense that they contribute
to the characterization of the narrator and the intimate comic relation-
ship between him and the reader. At times they become so far divorced
from the particular story being told that it is easy to understand how
later novelists could misinterpret them as merely ornamental, and imitate
them without imitating their general functionality. No one else in English
fiction had ever tried to attain the degree of intimacy that Fielding at-
tains in his intrusive conversations with his "readers," and it is not
strange that his intimacy should have been copied without reference to

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180 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

his ends. Thus it is his introductory chapters, and the techniques dis-
played in them, which, along with his methods of entitling chapters,
were most frequently borrowed during the next decade. Indeed, these
chapters, if read through without any of the intervening story, make a
kind of running "story" of growing intimacy between the narrator and
the reader, and Fielding's followers can hardly be condemned for ex-
ploring the possibilities of this masterful intimacy for its own sake. In
his closing prefatory comment in Tom Jones, Fielding practically invites
this kind of imitation, by producing a denouement to the story of his
relationships with the reader, and thus implying a kind of autonomous
interest which, in his story when it is read properly, the intrusions never
really have:
We are now, reader, arrived at the last stage of our long journey. As we have,
therefore, travelled together through so many pages, let us behave to one another
like fellow-travellers in a stage-coach, who have passed several days in the com-
pany of each other; and who, notwithstanding any bickerings or little animosities
which may have occurred on the road, generally make all up at last, and mount,
for the last time, into their vehicle with cheerfulness and good-humour....
And now, my friend, I take this opportunity (as I shall have no other) of heart-
ily wishing thee well. If I have been an entertaining companion to thee, I
promise thee it is what I have desired. If in anything I have offended, it was
really without any intention. Some things, perhaps, here said, may have hit
thee or thy friends; but I do most solemnly declare they were not pointed at thee
or them....

Such passages could not fail to excite imitation in third-rat


anxious to exploit new possibilities in fiction.

Fielding's narrator was immediately imitated by almost everyone.


The result was that, whereas most novels in previous decades had used
the self-conscious narrator only incidentally, most novels in the fifties
indulged in a great amount of intrusive play. Novelists were aware that
something had happened to the role of the narrator, and that they must
somehow abandon the "old style" and take up with the new. For many
of them this meant little more than employing more or less weak imita-
tions of Fielding's playful chapter headings, or, at the most, his prefatory
chapters.14 Even in many of the works which are written throughout
with an eye on Fielding, the narrative play is both quantitatively and
qualitatively inferior to that in Tom Jones, seldom going beyond mere
ornamentality.
14 E.g., Mrs. Charlotte Lennox' The Female Quixote (1752) and Thomas Mozeen's Young
Scarron (1752).

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Wayne C. Booth 181

But there were also published during this decade more genuinely
Shandean works than in the whole preceding quarter century. Some of
them, it is true, have little if anything more than is to be found in Field-
ing; others approach, in certain respects, to even the most eccentric
elements of Sterne's practice.
Perhaps the first novel after Tom Jones to show how Fielding was to
influence succeeding narrative practice was Charlotte Summers,5 which
is dominated by the presence of a persistently intruding narrator. Al-
though most of his comments are closer to Fielding's style than to Sterne's
they go farther than Fielding's in the characterization of the "readers,"
in the intimate portrayal of the narrator in his physical surroundings,
facing his writing problems, and in the elaboration of conversations be-
tween them. The "readers," for example, are not only more various, but
also much more fully endowed with ridiculous characteristics than are
Fielding's:
I fancy by this Time, my Readers are pretty well acquainted with the Lady
Bountiful, and ready to thank me for the Pains I have taken ... but I can hear
Beau Thoughtless and pretty Miss Pert, whispering to one another, 'Hang the old
Woman, I wish we were done with her, we have seen enough of her, I want to
see the young Wench . . . ' but I must inform the pretty Triflers, that I am de-
termined my Readers shall learn something in every Chapter, and in this,
amongst other Things, they must learn and practice Patience ... (I, 24)
Oh Pox upon her for a Fool ... says grayhair'd Mrs. Sit-her-time, she'll never
get such another Match,-but plague on the Author. (II, 221)
What the Devil does the Fellow mean? .. says Dick Dapperwit, in a Pas-
sion . . . (II, 1-2)

One outstanding example of this multifarious "reader," who is always,


underneath his various disguises, the same stupid person introduced for
the real and unspecified reader to laugh at, is also an interesting analogue
of Sterne's many manipulations of his temporal progression from chapter
to chapter. At the conclusion of Chapter Four, the narrator says: "But
now ... I shall permit the Reader to take a Nap, or entertain himself
any other way most suitable to his Inclinations; only let him remember
that he left off at the End of the 4th Chapter." Chapter Five begins with
Miss Arabella Dimple, a new "reader," requesting her Maid Polly to go
on reading The Parish Girl:
Pray, Ma'am, where shall I begin, did your Ladyship fold down where you left
off?-No, Fool, I did not; the Book is divided into Chapters on Purpose to
prevent that ugly Custom ... and, now I think on't, the Author bid me remem-

16 The History of Charlotte Summers, The Fortunate Parish Girl (London, 1749). CBEL
says that this book has been attributed to Sarah Fielding. The "first edition" I have used
is dated 1750.

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182 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

ber, that I left off at the End of-I think it was the 6th Chapter. Turn to the 7th
Chapter, and let me hear how it begins-Polly reads, "Chapter the 7th,-The
Death of my Lady Fanciful's Squirrel ...." Hold, Wench, you read too fast;
and I don't understand one Word of what you are saying... I must not have
got so far-Look back to the End of that Chapter where the Blookhead of an
Author bids us take a Nap, and remember where he left off.-O la, Ma'am, I
have found it; here it is. As your Ladyship said, he says ... (I, 68-69)

and she repeats the conclusion of Chapter iv. She then goes on reading
aloud from page 69 to page 85, at which point the narrator intrudes:
"But the Reader must remember Polly, Miss Dimple's Maid, is reading
all this while. She had just come to this Length, when she looks about at
her Mistress and finds her fast asleep . . . its time to put an end to the
Chapter, when pretty Miss Dimple sleeps over it." This is of course a
great "advance" over Fielding;16 it is unquestionably as "Shandean"
as anything Tristram ever does.
Perhaps the "reader" closest to any of Sterne's is Miss Censorious,
sharply on the lookout for any bawdry:
You must know then, that this Lady [Lady Bountiful], amiable as she is in
Person and Character has her Failings and some little Foibles; but pray Miss
Censorious don't run too quick upon a malicious Scent, her Faults are not such
as your Imagination has fixed on, I tell you positively she is not familiar with her
Chaplain,-nor with the Doctor,-nor any Man on Earth; she is chaste as the
new-fallen Snow. . . 'Hang your Impertinence, I did not think that she was
actually naughty with any of the odious Male Things, I but supposed that it
might be such a Thing which you introduced with so much Formality. But why
need you keep a Person in suspence? Tell us for God sake . . . ' Well Miss, I'll
keep you no longer in Pain ... (I, 25-26)

This is exactly the treatment Sterne gives to "Madam," the lecherous


prude, who persists in seeing and condemning dirty allusions where the
"innocent" Tristram intends none.
The narrator is more vividly drawn than is Fielding's.7 But more in
teresting than his rather tedious pipe-smoking and nap-taking are
conversations with his readers, the most unconventional being when t
"Widow Lackit" persuades him to alter his conclusion, somewhat in t
16 It is perhaps obvious that an increase in the vividness of the intrusions has no neces
sary relationship to the quality of a whole work. Actually such a sequence is detrimen
to the story itself. But it is this very excessive quality about the intrusions which carrie
the novel as a whole one step closer to the border-line beyond which lies the new kind
work written by Stere.
17 As in Tom Jones, the most fully developed picture of the narrator is given in t
prefatory chapters to each of the books. See especially Books I and II, in the first chapte
of which the author's indebtedness to Fielding is explicitly avowed (I.l-11; 215-228; e
pp. 9 and 221).

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Wayne C. Booth 183

manner of The Beggar's Opera: "I think I had best leave her [Charlotte]
there, since she now enjoys as much as can possibly make a reasonable
Woman happy. Oh, Pox! says Widow Lackit, sure you won't give over
without marrying her? It's impossible she can be happy without a Hus-
band. Besides, it's contrary to all Rule to end a History of this Kind,
without marrying the Hero and Heroine. Plague! I would not give a
Rush for it without a Wedding-night" (II, 313-314; for other conversa-
tions, see I, 2, 8, 12, 23, 34, 49, 228; II, 56, 108, 134, 295). And, with mock
reluctance, a happy ending is provided.
There are only two steps that an author can take beyond the use of
the narrator in this book; Sterne took those steps in making his narrator
the subject of his own book, and in extending the intrusions in quantity
until the whole book seems to be the product of the kind of whimsy which
produces the altered conclusion of Charlotte Summers.
There are many other works published in the next few years which, if
written in the thirties or forties, would have been landmarks in this
history but which, coming when they do, are not worth individual cita-
tion.18 There is one, however, which can hardly be thus dismissed;
Captain Greenland, by William Goodall,l9 may be no better as a novel
than any of the others, but it is probably more completely dominated
by an intruding narrator than any previous novel. More than half of
the first thirty pages are taken up with commentary of the following kind
on the book, its author, and its "readers":
Volume I, Chapter 1: Containing Matter prefatory, necessary, and useful, both
to the Author and the Reader. And wherein the latter is most wisely informed
of the Capacity and Power of the Former.... (p. 1)
If the Patience of our good Readers be anywise too far trespassed upon, in

18 For example: The Adventures of Mr. Loveill, Interspers'd with many Real Amours of
The Modern Polite World (London, 1750), esp. pp. 1-2; John Kidgell, The Card (Dublin,
1755), esp. pp. 11-13; The Juvenile Adventures of David Ranger, Esq. ... (London, 1757);
Angola. An Indian History. A Work destitute of all Probability ... (London, 1750); The
Life and Memoirs of Mr. Ephraim Tristram Bates, commonly called Corporal Bates, A
Brokenhearted Soldier (London, 1756). This last work is important to the study of Tristram
Shandy more for other reasons than for its narrative intrusions; it is a possible source,
though an indefinite one, for some of the materials-as distinct from the devices-of
Sterne's book (see "A Precursor of Tristram Shandy," by Helen Sard Hughes, JEGP, xvin
[1918], 227-251). But it does show a good deal of fairly subtle narrative intrusion (e.g., pp.
10, 14, 15, 90). Perhaps the best stroke is the author's trick of having Bates begin his story
in third-person, with a great show of objectivity, and then more or less unconsciously drift
into first-person at crucial points in the story, thus throwing a delightful retrospective
humor over all the pretenses of the preceding narrative.
19 The Adventures of Captain Greenland, Written in Imitation of all those Wise, Learned,
Witty, and Humorous Authors, who either already have, or hereafter may Write in the same
Stile and Manner (London, 1752).

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184 The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction

detaining too long their Enterance on the Body of this useful Work; to make them
some amends, we have this Comfort in store for them; that we shall give them a
much greater Opportunity to prove their Patience, as well as all their other Vir-
tues and Passions, before they have travelled through half the Vicissitudes of this
useful History. (I, 8)
Our Readers shall here be Remember'd, that in our first Chapter we reserved
to ourselves a Right of digressing, when, where, and howsoever, we, in our infi-
nite Judgment, shall think proper ... (I, 20)
And now, having it occur to our Fancy, that the Reader of this Work may be
compared to a Man who is riding a long Journey, through strange and uncertain
Roads; where he will sometimes find himself in a Wood, sometimes in a long open
Desart... and anon set fast in a Slough; we therefore, as the whole Track of
this Circuit is cut and marked out by us ... have erected all modern Con-
veniencies, except Post-Chaises, for him to travel by. [After making his road
difficult for a time] ... as a Reward for his Toil, and to Refresh him we shall
immediately present him with a Tavern... or Ginshop; in the Shapes of a
Digression, a Poem, a Song, or a Story. The Number of our Pages may serve for
Mile-stones, and when he is weary, and has travelled his Day, at the end of our
Chapter he may put up his Horse, and so now we'll suppose him to be gone to
his Rest. (I, 30-32)

I have found no other work of comic fiction before Tristram Shandy


with as many passages of this sort in the opening pages, and they continue
with only slight abatement throughout the long book.20 No one who had
read this book could have been shocked by Tristram Shandy seven years
later, or could have felt that Sterne's narrative style was derived from
very remote sources. But few read it (there was only one edition), and
when Tristram's book came, it was so superior to the weak adventures and
tedious intrusions of Captain Greenland that everyone read it. There is
little reason to wonder that Sterne was taken to be a much more out-
rageous original than he really was.
Whether Sterne himself read Captain Greenland or not, there can be
no doubt that the tremendous increase in intrusive material in comic
fiction during the fifties had an effect on him. Although it is perhaps im-
possible to discover now which of these works after Fielding Sterne really
knew and used, he must have encountered at least some of them. The
progression from Fielding through Charlotte Summers and Captain Green-
land (and a great many other works) to Tristram Shandy is too continuous
to have been accidental. Though Sterne undoubtedly obtained much of
his intrusive material from earlier writers not properly within the tradi-
tion considered here, he was at the same time a product of the novels
that were published as he was maturing his own methods. Some of these
20 See I, 108; nr, 149-50, 168, 186, 309; m, 1, 2, 88, 149, 186, 233, 250, 297; iv, 14, 21, 30,
39, 50, 51, 59, 62, 64, 271, etc.

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Wayne C. Booth 185

novels, as we have seen, carry the intruding narrator about as far as he


can go without becoming what he becomes in Tristram Shandy-that
is, a force so disruptive that it transforms the very nature of the work.
In them the narrator never becomes the central interest, the unifying
factor. After he has done his worst, the comic plot remains in all of them
the only element which unifies the whole, insofar as the works are unified.
In one sense, then, Sterne's development can be considered as merely
the reductio ad absurdum of one major tendency in preceding fiction:
he has taken a device which in previous writers was subordinate to other
ends and made it an end in itself. He has stepped over the line into seem-
ing chaos. His novel is not really held together by its "story," although
there is much more of this kind of cohesion than appears on the surface.
The narrators of Pharsamon, Tom Jones, Charlotte Summers, and Captain
Greenland have been thrown together into one narrator and given such
free rein that the novel in the traditional sense is destroyed.
But such a view, although it corrects some of our past errors about the
sources of Sterne's chief devices, is itself one-sided. It is true that the
explosion was not a matter of importing foreign devices from other, older
traditions; the devices were within the tradition, and were simply exten-
sions of what had been happening to English and continental fiction for
generations. But as everyone is beginning to recognize, Tristram Shzandy
is not as chaotic a book as it seems; it is not really an explosion of all
formal canons but only seems to be so. Sterne takes the novel beyond
the line always carefully avoided by earlier novelists, but the line is not
a line between unity and chaos. Rather it is a line between one kind of
unity and another kind of unity, itself a fusion of various cohesive forces
at work in the older "facetious" and "chaotic" traditions. What Sterne
learned from Montaigne and Beroalde de Verville and "Gabriel John"
and Dunton and Swift was not how to create a self-conscious narrator
who could disrupt conventional fictional unity; he had been learning
that from the novels of his own time. What he learned was how to em-
ploy this kind of narrator to impose unity, of however "loose" or un-
conventional a kind, on seemingly disparate materials. Sterne's true
achievement is in taking forces which had become more and more dis-
ruptive in comic fiction and synthesizing them, with the help of older
models, into a new kind of fictional whole. One need only contrast the
over-all excellence of Tristram Shandy with the mediocrity of "Shandean"
works like Captain Greenland to realize the greatness of that achievement.
HAVERFORD COLLEGE
Haverford, Pa.

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