Narcissistic Narrative: Tristram Shandy and the Diseased Text

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2014
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Haverford College. Department of English
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
"Narcissistic Narrative: Tristram Shandy and the Diseased Text" explores the language of disease in the eighteenth-century Laurence Sterne novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The novel is a fictionalized autobiography written by the character-narrator Tristram Shandy in an auspicious attempt to flawlessly represent the entirety of his life. The characters of the novel, including the character-narrator Tristram Shandy, are inflicted with physical maladies that lead them down paths of irony, self-consciousness, and fear of death. Not only are these characters narcissistic in the Freudian sense, but the text of the novel Tristram Shandy is also diseased and narcissistic. Furthermore, Tristram Shandy's characters demonstrate varying levels of success in dealing with their narcissism, and orienting themselves toward recovery. The most successful narcissist in the text is ultimately Tristram himself, who recognizes the impossibility of his literary task, and comes to terms with death in a fruitful and liberating way. Two other narcissistic characters who deal with their disease less successfully are Parson Yorick and Tristram's Uncle Toby. The literary theories of Paul de Man, Dominick La Capra, and Walter Benjamin provide tools with which to discern between successful and unsuccessful narcissism, as well as understand better the process of recovery, both for individuals and for literary texts. Ultimately, Tristram recognizes that his task of complete self-representation is impossible, but Tristram Shandy does not suffer for that realization. Rather, the book stands as a life-affirming novel that refuses to stagnate in its own fear of death.
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