Comparative Philosophy Commons^™

Balance In Tristram Shandy: Laurence Sterne Through Friedrich Schiller’S Eyes, Peter W. Rosenberger

Student Publications

Many critics of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy see the novel’s narrative elements and structure as a form of narrative play, which reject Enlightenment systems of understanding. In this paper, through the philosophy of Friedrich Schiller, I will argue that the novel’s narrative structure is best understood as a balance of aesthetic impulses. For most scholars, to understand the narrative form, digressions, philosophy of knowledge, and/or history in Tristram Shandy, one must understand how the novel subverts the categorization and systematization of Enlightenment thinking. The patterns of subversion in the text lend themselves to arguments that characterize the novel as one …