ADAPTING TRISTRAM SHANDY by Adria Young Submitted in ...

(Sterne 580). Neither do we receive satisfaction with a romantic ending; Toby is just too
innocent, I suppose. The novel also satirizes the tradition of “learned wit” (Jefferson
225), 28 the “encyclopedic” tradition and the systematization of knowledge, represented by
Walter (Lynch 1-2), and medical discourses, represented by Dr. Slop and based on the
works of John Burton (Bosch 209). As for the military themes, David McNeil finds that it
is a “grotesque” rather than a “satire,” (151) which better accounts for the “yoking of the
vulgar and heroic” throughout (160). But the convention that is most recognizable, the
most prominent theme in the novel, and the basis of the narrative style, is the
fictionalized autobiography.
From the title, The Life and Opinionsof Tristram Shandy, Sterne sets up the novel
as a fictional autobiography, which was a popular genre in literature by mid-century.
Defoe’s Moll Flanders is recognized as one the first novels to give a narrative shape to
the genre. 29 The progresses of the Rake and the Harlot, by Hogarth, also contributed to
this narrative arc, even with their satirical moral subtexts. Kieran More describes the
fictional autobiography as a “retrospective attempt to find meaning and pattern” in the
subject’s life (148). There are thus two narrative modes at play: the recollection of events
and the reflection upon their meanings. And, Tristram’s digressive and disorganized
nature claims those “meaning[s] and pattern[s]” to be “chaotic,” (Uphaus 112) and
inconsistent, which suggests that anything else is total fiction, even though Tristram’s
story is also (mostly) fiction. Regardless, Tristram Shandy sets up all of the trappings of
this genre and satirizes its conventions. Tristram starts the narration earlier than his own
birth, for instance, as the story begins at the moment of his conception, famously “ab
ovo” (Sterne 8). And, we are given many more “opinions” that we receive of the “life,”
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