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The
Brownstone Journal >>
Issues >> Vol.
X Spring 2001
Fractal Time in Tristram Shandy
Sean Wright (CAS XX) is a sophomore
in the University Professors Program, studying Cognitive Neuroscience.
He would like to thank Professor Bruce Redford for his valuable
criticism and Mr. Steve Person for his lasting encouragement
and guidance.
In the preface to his edition of Shakespeare’s
plays, Samuel Johnson notes: “Time is, of all modes of existence,
most obsequious to the imagination” (Preface, 690-91). Tristram
Shandy, certainly, is a work of great imagination. It should
be supposed, therefore, that time plays an integral role in
the novel’s design. Critics have questioned the cohesiveness
of the novel, looking in vain for an unambiguous plot. Despite
criticism and a lack of conventional construction, Tristram
Shandy is a coherent text. Although the text lacks conventional
stylistic devices, an esoteric concept from physics—fractal
time—proves that the novel fulfills the criteria for narrative;
sustained by linguistic free play, opposed to stasis, it tends
towards movement, amplification, and digression by controlling
the sense of time.
Sterne manipulates the reader’s sense of time throughout the
text. By including unconventional stylistic devices, Sterne
violates the reader’s expectation of a smooth, continuous, and
directed sense of time. He has successfully introduced the notion
of “fractal time” to replace the familiar sense of time as the
basic organizing element of the novel.
An intuitive, non-technical description of fractal time is given
in Seven Life Lessons of Chaos: Timeless Wisdom from the Science
of Change. Conventionally, time is depicted as an arrow that
relentlessly moves forward in a faultlessly straight line. Fractal
time contrasts starkly with this mechanical description of time.
The authors, Briggs and Peat, explain:
Chaos theory replaces the line with an endlessly complex figure
of fractal dimension. At every scale of magnification, the fractal
reveals new patterns and intricacies. Chaos theory argues that
there are no simple lines in nature. What may look from a distance
to be linear reveals on closer examination the twists and turns
and arabesques of infinite fractal detail. Other lines turn
out to be not even continuous but composed of clusters of tiny
discontinuities, and clusters within these clusters.
Brings and Peet 126
The descriptions of fractals and chaos are couched in the language
of complexity theory. Complexity theory describes the non-linear
behavior of dynamical systems. From complexity theory, one can
deduce that time has fractal qualities and recognize that time
is not experienced uniformly. That is, one’s sense of the passage
of time depends on one’s environment, perception, and mood;
the potter who must gauge the appropriate temperature and remove
a pot from the kiln in a brief second has a different sense
of time than the bored tourist who is temporarily observing
the scene. To the extent that an author manipulates these factors,
he or she manipulates the fractal intricacies of time, thereby
controlling the reader’s sense of time. Reconsideration of Johnson’s
prefatory statement further elucidates the contraction and dilation
of fractal time that affects one’s sense of temporal flow:
Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the
imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage
of hours. In contemplation we easily contract the time of real
actions.
Preface, 690-95
Where is fractal time in Tristam Shandy? Compare the lines
that Sterne uses to portray the course of his narrative to a
visual representation of fractal time [Fig. 1]:
Through his visual representations of the narrative, Sterne
emphasizes the non-linearity of its logic. He seems to be mocking
himself in the remarks which immediately precede the image of
the line when he proclaims: “I make no doubt but I shall be
able to go on with my uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable
straight line” (VI, xl. 391). A similar stylistic device is
used in Chapter IV of Volume IX. Corporal Trim gives a flourish
with his stick to describe, “Whilst a man is free.” Instead
of text, the flourish is depicted in the same manner of fractal
time with a curling, undirected line which intersects itself.
Making full use of his opportunities to avoid the use of straightforward,
cumulative plot, Sterne delights in the aleatory rendering of
the narrative. The most prominent examples of these non-linear
effects also emphasize the materiality of the book. A black
page appears after an allusive epitaph, “Alas, poor YORICK”
(I, xii, 28). The page, evoking the image of a shroud or coffin,
provides a visual means to mourn the death of Yorick. It also
freezes the temporal flow. The reader is free to consider the
significance of the black page. The relative freedom provided
by the visual representation gives the reader a limited role
in the creation of the text. As a result of its inherent non-linearity,
Tristram Shandy becomes, as critic Roland Barthes describes,
a writerly text. The writerly text, which offers each reader
a unique experience of the text by involving each of them in
the construction and interpretation of the text, contrasts with
a readerly text such as Tom Jones in which the author, acting
like a deity, has complete control over the structure (and,
to a certain degree, meaning) of the novel. The inset marble
page elucidates the nature of writerly texts and provides another
example of atemporal freezing. In a jesting tone, Sterne exhorts
the reader to throw down the book if he is not willing to read:
[F]or without much reading, by which your reverence knows,
I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate
the moral of the next marble page (motley emblem of my work!)
than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel
the many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically
hid under the dark veil of the black one.
III, xxxvi, 184
The marble page, the “motley emblem” of Sterne’s novel, offers
a visual representation of a fractal motif, another means of
illustrating the non-linear quality of the narrative. Also,
the unique marble inset page, which was included with each copy
of the book sold in the 18th century, ensures a unique, fractal
experience of the novel.
Critic Wayne Booth subtly hints at Sterne’s fractal treatment
of time. He states that a conventional novel should not “require
all this complexity. The chaos is all of [Sterne’s] own making”
(Booth, 231). In addition, he makes a statement in which the
influence of fractal time is almost palpable: “The ironies that
operate against Tristam depend on the contrast between essential
simplicity and the fantastical chaos that Tristram makes of
it” (231-32). The terms Booth chooses—complexity, chaos, and
fantastic chaos—are used in the same manner as the technical
definitions given to these terms in complexity theory.
Although he uses the vernacular of chaos theory to characterize
Tristram Shandy, Booth rejects the idea that chaos is an effective
structure for the novel. He claims: “Sterne faces, like the
reader, the world of chaos in fleeting time as it threatens
the artist’s effort to be true to that world without lapsing
into chaos itself.” However, it is precisely this lapse into
chaos itself which provides a cogent means of explicating the
elusive continuity of the novel. The term Sterne uses in place
of “chaos” is “digression.” Sterne’s narrative logic favors
endless literary excursions, finding structure not in the exigencies
of plot but rather in the infinite, intricate, and interrelated
possibilities of text. The narrative tactics are described by
the Shandean logic of digressions:
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine:--they are the
life, the soul of reading:--take them out of this book for instance,--you
might as well take the book along with them; […] restore them
to the writer:--he steps forth like a bridegroom,--bids All
hail; brings in variety, and forbids appetite to fail.
(I, xxii, 58)
Every digression is progressive, reinforcing the complexity
of the chronological scheme. Sterne uses the metaphor of cogs
or flywheels in a complex machine to demonstrate the role of
digressions: “I have constructed the main work and the adventitious
parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated
and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel
within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been
kept-a-going” (I, xxii, 59).
The standard account of the function of the digressions in Tristram
Shandy depicts them as the author’s arsenal in a battle with
time: Sterne, it is suggested, redefines or even rejects the
constructs of time in “an effort to ascend from the world of
time into a truer world” (Booth, 233). The transcendent, truer
world is that of fractal time.
In conclusion, Tristram Shandy is a farrago of digressive, diverse
elements that Sterne combines to control the temporal flow and
achieve a sense of fractal time. These elements span the entire
spectrum of temporality, ranging from the unrestricted, continuous
flow of time to absolute atemporality. Fusing physics and fiction,
the underlying chaotic structure provides a cohesive framework
upon which the novel is based. TBJ
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1983.
Briggs, John and Peat. F. David. Seven Life Lessons of Chaos:
Timeless Wisdom from the Science of Change. USA: Harper Collins,
1999.
Lancashire, Ian, ed. Mr. Samuel Johnson’s Preface to his edition
of Shakespeare’s Plays. Mar. 2001. http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/criticism/johns_il.html.
Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1997.
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