Sonorous Duration:Tristram Shandyand the Temporality of Novels

Abstract

This essay tracks relations between Laurence Sterne's sonorous prose and his discussions of time inTristram Shandy(1759-67), identifying a novelistic technique of rhythmic narration geared to represent experiential temporality. I call this technique sonorous duration, and I demonstrate how it conveys a pulsating embodied experience shared by intradiegetic communities as well as by readers. After giving a brief account of early musicology and eighteenth-century elocutionary treatises to indicate the cultural context in which Sterne develops his notions of rhythm and duration, I offer close readings of key scenes inTristram Shandythat exemplify a novelistic interest in sonority as a means for representing shared and embodied temporal experience. In conclusion I consider the implications these durational readings have for formalist discussions by critics such as Gérard Genette and Garrett Stewart.

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