Tristram Cyborg and Toby Toolmaker: Body, Tools, and Hobbyhorse in Tristram Shandy

Abstract

Laurence Sterne seemed aware, in some form, of what we now call cyborgism—that without machines and tools, the human body and mind in the age of Cartesian rationalism are disturbingly discontinuous. This essay explores the body in Tristram Shandy, focusing on the hobbyhorse as mechanical artifact that bridges the discontinuity between mind and body. Drawing on anthropological theories of tool use, medical and linguistic discourses of Sterne's time, and cyborg studies, the essay argues that the tools and machines of the Shandean hobbyhorses enable an imagined autoerotic sexuality that compensates for the inadequacies of the novel's feeble bodies.

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