ABSTRACT

There can be no doubt that Tristram Shandy’s structure is to a large extent numerological and that Sterne sees number symbolism as a still valid way of describing the structure of the universe. At the same time he shares in the scepticism of his age, so that the numbers in Tristram Shandy are also a hitherto unexplored aspect of Sterne’s ‘learned wit’. The first volume opens, significantly, on a Sunday night: the beginning of a week; but also, surely, the beginning of the Week of Creation, since Walter’s exasperated reference to ‘the creation of the world’ at the end of chapter 1 hints that the creation of Tristram and of the novel recapitulate the primal act of creation. Tristram Shandy has its elements of repetitive structuring, and they function clearly enough to reinforce the novel’s numerology. Misfortune and the preoccupation with time are ubiquitous in Tristram Shandy; Burton’s Anatomy was one of its main inspirations.