Rhetoric as Fictional Technique in Tristram Shandy.

Sterne makes highly conscious use of the devices of classical and Renaissance rhetoric in +Tristram Shandy=, and adapts these devices to the requirements of fictional rhetoric, or the relationship between the author and his readers. The narrator is a conscious rhetorician whose interventions direct the reader towards a clearer understanding of the nature and purpose of the book, the attitude which ought to be adopted towards the various characters, and an understanding of the nature of moral behavior and social hypocrisy. Walter Shandy is also a rhetorician, but a less successful one; he is the victim of a continual disparity between intention and performance, a disparity which arises mainly from his inability to distinguish between the two. Sterne creates his character almost entirely around this disparity: the conflict between Walter's "rhetoric" and his "conduct." Sterne's interest in the more esoteric devices of rhetoric was unusual for his time, but it is integral to the structure and purpose of his novel.

Rhetoric as Fictional Technique in Tristram Shandy. Journal Articles