UDK 821.111-31.09 Sterne L.

Stern’s “Tristram Shandy”: The Birth of Deconstruction
 

Summary: This paper analizes Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy from the perspective of the theory of deconstruction by discussing the literary categories of narration, character, plot, writer, reader and novel. The primary aim of the paper is to show that the said categories are represented as an illusion, i.e. deconstructed in the proces of their very construction, questioning the limits and possibilities of a literary text. One of the aims of this paper is to show Tristam Shandy as a presursor to not only a deconstructive approach to text but also the contemporary concept of hypertext and cyber-literature. In a wider context the paper discusses the possibilities of the novel’s visual representation (Tristram Shandy on film).