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Time and Space in Tristram Shandy and Other Eighteenth-Century Novels: the Issues of Progression and Continuity

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Time and Space in Tristram Shandy and Other Eighteenth-Century Novels: the Issues of Progression and Continuity The University of Sheffield G. L. Gourdon Time and space in Tristram Shandy and other eighteenth-century novels: the issues of progression and continuity PhD thesis 2002 Time and space in Tristram Shandy and other eighteenth-century novels: the issues of progression and continuity Gisele Liliane Gourdon PhD thesis School of English The University of Sheffield March 2002 'SUMMARY The thesis argues that the narratives of the eighteenth-century novels selected for this study demonstrate a conscious manipulation of time and space, and that the consequence of this manipulation is to provide the reader with a unique literary journey through the text. The thesis, in its analysis and comparison of these distinctive journeys, chooses to focus on the narrative techniques which facilitate or hamper progression and continuity within the texts. It particularly concentrates on the impact of these narrative techniques on the reading experience. The first chapter studies and compares texts resorting mainly to the present tense with those predominantly written in the past tense. It examines the effects of the tense used in the narration on the reader's engrossment in the fiction. The second chapter concentrates on the repercussions of the author's choice of a beginning and an ending for his story on the nature of the progression of the narrative. The third chapter is devoted to the destabilising reading journey offered by Tristram Shandy. It examines the numerous techniques which react against continuity and progression in time and in space, and the narrator's motivation behind their use. It shows how the narrative choices of Tristram Shandy place the reader face to face with his own act of reading. The fourth and final chapter is concerned with the role and the status of fictional footnotes in some eighteenth-century prose fictions. It demonstrates the fictional nature of the footnotes in Tom Jones. It argues that fictional footnotes affect the reader's progression across the text in time and in space as well as his understanding of the work of fiction, and this in a fundamental way. 11 CONTENTS SUMMARY CONTENTS ii ABBREVIATIONS 111 INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 The Present Tense and Willing Suspension of Disbelief 11 CHAPTER 2 Beginnings and Endings 72 CHAPTER 3 Tristram Shandy: The Peculiarities of the Progression of the Narrative 146 CHAPTER 4 Fictional Footnotes in Eighteenth-Century Prose Fiction 198 CONCLUSION 258 BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 iii ABBREVIATIONS ASJ= Sterne, Laurence, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, Stout, Gardner D. Jr., ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) CL= Richardson, Samuel, Clarissa or the History ofa Young Lady, Ross, Angus, ed. (Hardmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985) HC= Smollett, Tobias, The Expedition ofHumphry Clinker, Knapp, Lewis M., ed., revised by Bouce, Paul-Gabriel (Oxford - New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) Letters = Sterne, Laurence, Letters ofLaurence Sterne, Curtis, Lewis Perry ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935) MF= Defoe, Daniel, The Fortunes and Misfortunes ofthe Famous Moll Flanders, & c., Starr, G. A., ed. (London - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971) Tale = Swift, Jonathan, A Tale ofA Tub & C., Guthkelch, A. C. and D. Nichol Smith, eds. (Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 1920, 2nd edn, 1958) TJ= Fielding, Henry, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Bowers, Fredson and Martin Battestin eds. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1974) TS= Sterne, Laurence, The Life and Opinions ofTristram Shandy, Gentleman, in The Florida Edition ofthe Works o/Laurence Sterne, New, Melvyn and Joan New, eds. (Gainesville: The University Presses of Florida, volumes one and two, 1978; volume three, 1984) INTRODUCTION The first half of the eighteenth century is a fascinating cross-road between the influence of the long established occiqental philosophy of a man turned towards God, eternity and infinity, and a more recent scientific and materialistic view of a finite man. It also witnesses the emergence ofa romantic and subjective movement which gives a central place to man's inner thoughts and feelings. The combination of these trends is the background against which the English novel arises throughout the eighteenth century. As the genre develops, characters are described as individuals against a realistic setting. They are seen perfonning everyday actions as opposed to heroic and saintly ones. They reveal thoughts and react against circumstances in a way consistent with their personality, rather than representing outside virtues or sins. They evolve in time and space, being conscious of their past and anxious for their future. The form of the narrative also adapts to present the more personal development of actions, thoughts and feelings of the new genre. The perception of the notions of time and space changed through the centuries following the evolution of sciences, philosophy, and religion. By the eighteenth century, with the development of the telescope and the microscope, and Newton's laws of motion, space comes to be seen, like time, as infinite and infinitely divisible. Besides, time is no longer an external factor in ' men's lives that they cannot reach or control; it has also become part of them. They feel they have a direct, permanent and unique contact with their own continuity, and that the consciousness of any individual can experience, analyse, and master time. Personality then 1 See Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (London: Benjamin Motte, 1729). 2 becomes defined by the interpretation of past and present self-awareness. Ian Watt correctly points out that: Locke had defmed personal identity as an identity of consciousness through duration in time; the individual was in touch with his own continuing identity through memory of his past thoughts and actions.2 The thesis proposes to study the concept of time in conjunction with that of space, as they will be shown necessarily to complement each other in textual analysis. Moreover, the meanings of the two terms have evolved closely and have often overlapped throughout history. In fact: until the seventeenth century the word •space , had the general meaning of 'extent', and in English, back to the fourteenth century. was used in two main specific senses, one in regard to time, an extent or lapse or interval of time, and the other in respect of linear distance, an extent or interval between two or more points, and consequently also a superficial extent or area.' According to Locke, individualisation also requires space, so that time and space are logically inseparable even psychologically. In his discussion of duration, he points to the interdependence between the two elements. He explains that 'expansion and duration do mutually embrace and comprehend each other, every part of space being in every part of duration, and every part of duration in every part of expansion'.4 The interdependence of time and space is also present in Locke's defmition of general ideas, as 'ideas become general by separating them from the circumstances of time and place' (Essay, III 3 vi). Thus, we can infer that 'they become particular only when both these circumstances are specified' (The Rise ofthe Novel, p. 21). 2 Ian Watt. The Rise ofthe Novel, Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London: Chatto & Windus. 1957), p. 21. , Ivor Leclerc. 'The Concept of Space', in Probability, Time and Space in Eighteenth-Century Literature, ed. by Paula Backscheider (New York: AMS Press, ] 979), pp. 206·218 (p. 209) . .. John Locke. An &say Conceming Human Understanding: in Four Books (London: printed by Eliz. Holt, for Thomas Basset, 1690), n IS xii. 3 Written language, the vehicle of the fictional work, is traditionally presented in a linear and sequential way on the page. It is apprehended, in our occidental languages, from left to right and from the top to the bottom of the page.s As a result, reading, and thus the reader's experience of the fictional world, is a complex temporal process which combines the actual reading time, the frequency of the narrative and the temporality of the various fictional personae (narrators and characters). It is also and at the same time a journey through space, the concrete physical space of the page, that of the worlds described in the text, and that of the reader's imagination making sense of and reconfiguring these worlds.' The aspects of the notions of time and space on which the thesis concentrates are those of narrative progression and continuity in a selection of fictional works drawn from the eighteenth century. This study analyses how these narrative techniques influence the reading progress and the reader's engrossment in the story. It draws comparisons between the chosen fictions in order to attain a broader picture of issues which previous critics have partially looked at and mainly developed with regard to individual works. In most of the selected works, the narratorial-pseudo-authoriaI voice is the catalyst through which the fiction takes shape, and thus the focus of our attention. The self-conscious narrators of these works establish a relationship with their reader and guide or misguide their progress through the text. Previous studies of the eighteenth-century novel have looked at the cultural, historical, geographical and psychological angles to the study of time and space. Whilst these perspectives are important in their own right, this thesis chooses to adopt what seems to be 5 See Robert de Beaugrande, 'The Linearity of Reading: Fact, Fiction, or Frontier?', in Understanding Reading Comprehension, ed. by James Flood (Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 1984), 45-74. , See Paul Ricoeur, Temps et Recit 2: La configuration dans Ie recit de fiction (Paris: Seuil, 1984). 4 an undervalued critical tool: narratological analysis. The thesis scrutinises the writing mechanisms which carry the reader through the text, and analyses their impact on the reading experience. Thus, the physical and symbolic spaces in which the characters evolve are only mentioned in so far as they are directly relevant to the reader's journey through the narrative.
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