I’ve been looking at Tristram Shandy again. I find this book (even though I haven’t read it yet) very interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly it is the ultimate postmodern text written years before postmodernism existed. The narrative of the book is not only non linear but completely nonsensical; characters crop up after they have died, after 2 chapters of the book Tristram hasn’t even been born and much more. Here are some notes from a recent lecture on postmodernism:

Ultimate postmodern text Tristram Shandy (1760)!
Not based on myth, has no heroes or villains
Stock characters obsessed with unlikely, idiosyncratic things
Profoundly unadventurous and unromantic
Follows no recognisable genre
After 120pp, narrator has failed even to get himself born
Yorick dies early on and then appears at the end
Specifically draws narrative form to your attention
Discusses what the problems are with chronological storytelling
Shows how certain effects are achieved (rhetorical devices)
Asterisks, dashes, puns, figures of speech, squiggles, drawings
Digressions and deviations (back and forth, circular, fragmented)
Ambiguous language (sexual innuendo, assumptions of reader)
Black page, marble page, white page
Not at all resolved but a cock and bull story…