Robert Frost

Moraru Teodora-Bianca

IIIrd year, German-English gr. I.

The Psychological Origins and the Effects of the Hobbyhorse in Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy"

Defying Dr. Samuel Johnson's statement that "Nothing odd will do long", Laurence Sterne's eccentric masterpiece, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", an extended act of meditation upon story-telling based on John Locke's philosophical theory of the association of ideas, became a notable forerunner of the modern English novel, celebrating the infinite possibilities of the art of fiction.

Undoubtedly, one of the most crucial philosophical literary works of the 18th century was John Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding", which had a tremendous influence on the writers of his time and also on the worldwide approach to terms such as "the nature of thought" and "human consciousness". In his "Essay", Locke stated important theories about the sequence of ideas and their interrelation, which profoundly influenced Sterne and became the basis of much of the seemingly arbitrary structure of his comic metanovel, "Tristram Shandy".

Sterne adopted in particular two of Locke's concepts. First, the association of ideas, by which certain ideas, either by accident or because they have some particular significance, become so closely linked in a man's mind that he cannot think of any of them without inevitably calling up all the others as well, in the same order in which he had prieviously experienced them. Secondly, the train of ideas, which is a more general concept of the mind as being constantly in motion, with the result that one idea automatically suggests another in some way similar to it, which in turn leads on to something else. Sterne uses this latter concept as an explanation for much of the seemingly eccentric behaviour of his characters and as a basis for many of the dazzling transitions of time and space which take place in the novel.

John Locke considered the ideas as being the fundamental building blocks of all human thought, also stating the fact that "all our knowledge and ideas arise from experience" and that there are no innate ideas. He viewed the human mind as a "tabula rasa", a "white paper, void of all characters, without any Ideas". This empty room of the mind is gradually furnished with ideas of two sorts: first we obtain ideas of things we suppose to exist outside us in the physical world by sensation, and secondly we come to ideas of our own mental operations by reflection. Locke also defines the many ways in which the mind goes about producing these latter ideas and operating with them, making associations or differenciations.

Sterne uses the concept of the association of ideas in dealing with the inner features of his main characters. Each of them, most of all Walter Shandy and his brother Toby are locked in their private world of associations, their conversations presenting collisions of words rather than the communication of thoughts. Their eccentric hobbyhorses perfectly illustrate these very associations of ideas, making the two Shnady brothers appear like comic carricatures of Locke's theory. Captain Toby's hobbyhorse of buliding fortifications and re-enacting famous battles is not merely a passion, but gradually becomes an obsession. It can also be viewed as a means of escaping the continuous pain caused by his wound as well as the agitation of everyday life by plunging into a world of ideas, which slowly but surely begins to absorb him. The same holds for Walter Shandy, whose love for convoluted intellectual argumentation and readiness to embrace any tantalizing hypothesis lead him to propound a great number of pseudo-scientific theories.

So, hobbyhorses become such a constant preoccupation, that everything in the world gets subordinated to a single, all consuming idea. In explaining this fact, Sterne seems to see it as simply an extreme instance of what is already our innate psychological nature. Drawing on Locke's theory of the association of ideas, he dramatizes and even satirizes the way in which ideas that seem to be unrelated become connected in our mind. As an example, when Walter Shandy gives his brother an account of duration by paraphrasing Locke, Toby puts an abrupt end to the philosophical

analysis of "TIME and ETERNITY" by comparing his own mind to a smoke-jack. The same when, in the abstract regions of nose-theory, Walter compares the conduct of his pipe, in another paraphrase of Locke, to the operation of the "medius terminus", the joke is against the self-reflecting capacity of the mind, for none of the collections of ideas in Toby's mind bears any resemblance to the workmanship of the understanding governed by reason. These collections simply derive from the arrangements of things in space or of experiences in time, whose causes or contrasts end up as allied ideas in the human mind.

The relation between cause and effect is more complex: it is owing either to a conjunction of ideas that is subsequently arranged as a sequence, or to the arbitrary association of different ideas, which then manifests itself as a necessary connection. Of the first sort is the resemblance between the carreers of the biblical Dinah and the Shandy Dinah, out of which Walter develops the theory of Christian names; of the latter is Tristram's belief that he was doomed by marriage articles to have his nose squashed.

Association-by-contrast is at once the most "unreasonable" and fundamental mechanism of the Shandean mind. Ideas of light and darkness, continuity and interruption, as well as originality and imitation are both mingled in the action and the narrative of the book. This alliance rarely takes place between ideas on the same level, on the contrary, most opposite ideas are associated in the characters' minds. When the shocking novelty of Bobby's death enters the Shandy house, it is quickly assimilated to the familiar ideas of the inhabitants: Walter incorporates it into his reading, Toby associates it with battle and even Obadiah can concieve of it only on a coach box. As long as the new idea is not so astounding as to break habitual associations, it simply takes its place in the mental terrain, forming one of the many tracks in the process of recollection, thought and feeling. Another example are the circular "tracks of happiness" imprinted on Toby's bowling green, which perfectly correspond to those in his brain: one military item inevitably introduces another, and all the new ideas that enter there-of haste,