Mirrors in the Text: Self-reflexive Narrative in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy

Abstract

Laurence Sterne’s nine-volume work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman (1759-67), is not customarily categorized as a typical eighteenth-century novel for
the reason that it bears a close resemblance to postmodernist novels, albeit it was written and
published in the eighteenth century. One of the shared strands between Tristram Shandy and a
number of postmodernist novels, among other similarities, is narrative self-reflexivity. There are
numerous instances in Tristram Shandy that Sterne steps out of the narrative proper and directly
addresses the readers and comments on the processes of writing in order to provoke readers’
collaboration in the creation of meaning. Additionally, by employing textual and typographical
peculiarities such as marbled and black pages, asterisks and dashes, Sterne aims to reinforce the
self-reflexivity of his novel, and simultaneously defy the conventions of realistic novels. This
paper is an attempt to study these instances of self-reflexivity in Tristram Shandy’s narrative.