The Narrative Strategies Of Tristram Shandy

This dissertation makes a systematic analysis on the narrative strategies of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy from the points of view of the narrator, the narrative technique, the narrative time and the narrative language, with the aim of providing a new vision for Laurence Sterne's study.The narrator is an unreliable narrator, and his unreliable narration not only brings the novel peculiar narrative tensions but also impels readers to mediate on the discords between the narrator and the implied author. In this way, the deep meanings hidden in the novel are brought to light. The narrator is also an audience-conscious narrator, and he always communicates with his narrattees in peculiar ways, which not only brings readers suspense and surprises but also makes them participate in the novel's"performance".As for the narrative technique, both the digressive and the analogous ones are adopted in the novel. The digressive narrative technique has the function of making readers experience the lives that the narrator is experiencing as a man and a writer with immediacy while the analogous one has the effect of developing the themes of the novel.The narrative time is so cleverly maneuvered that particular effects have been achieved. The simultaneous events is presented through the techniques of juxtaposition; with the help of the chaotic temporal order, the timeless surge of life is somewhat vividly revealed, so is the characteristic of the process of man's interior experience—the impingement of future and past on present and vice versa. Scenes, ellipses, summaries and pauses produce both different narrative rhythms and other special effects.In the term of the narrative language, the baroque syntactic structure and the mock-heroic diction are often used in the novel. Through the use of the mock-baroque syntactic form, the thought in process is conveyed with immediacy. With the help of the mock-heroic diction, the trivialities of events are often ironically underlined.