Narrative and Progress in Tristram Shandy and Gulliver’s Travels
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To what extent do the texts you’ve read depend upon or problematize an understanding of
narrative as “progress”?
The problem of progress is, more precisely, the problem of its discontinuity. Progress is not a linear
and unvarying process, it is an idea deployed in order to further certain ways of thinking and
organising social relations. In this essay, I will explore the ways in which the ideology of progress is
historically specific and can be contested, and the ways in which we can read those contestations.
First, this essay will look at Kant’s definition of enlightenment, and ways in which we might seek to
contextualise ‘progress’ within the eighteenth century as an active concept and discourse. Secondly,
it will describe the ways in which the epistemological claims of that definition of progress are
challenged by Tristram Shandy and Gulliver’s Travels. The essay will then explore the differences
between the way they challenge progress and, finally, argue that Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of
minor literature opens up a way of understanding this difference which should be further explored.
In the short article “What is Enlightenment?” Kant offers us a motto which, for him, sums up the
enlightenment: “Have the courage to use your own understanding”. This reflexive examination
comes late in the decade (1784), after both Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Tristram Shandy (1759), but
it does well to sum up a current of thought which we can roughly describe as beginning in the
science of the 17th century and culminates in the French Revolution of 1789. As a result, we can take
Kant as indicating, in retrospect, much of the tradition which forms both texts. Enlightenment is a
process which moves from freedom to knowledge through the individual’s process of reason and
thought, freed from constraining structures. The process of enlightenment has a clear final goal, a
new form of objective knowledge and a rational understanding of the world. This proposition that
we can start from a point of dark and move towards light by a binary form of progress is, at its most
basic, an epistemological one. This binary form of movement (dark/light) means that essentially
there is one trajectory established, the dominant form of thought which has to lead this transition.
This is how enlightenment contributes to the creation of a single monolithic form of progress: a
grand hegemonic movement of thought moving inexorably along that binary line from dark to light.
Defining progress in this way, primarily through a discussion of enlightenment, allows us to locate it
alongside a specific historical concept, rather than using progress as an ahistorical constant. The
epistemology of progress has a specific formation, and it is this formation which the texts challenge
– not a vague sense of modernity but a concrete pattern of claims about knowledge and knowing.
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The major challenge presented to narrative as a form of progress in both Tristram Shandy and
Gulliver’s Travels takes place via questions of knowledge. The enlightenment project, as understood
via Kant, enshrines a number of major claims about knowledge, and by making these claims
problematic both novels challenge the overall project. Firstly, Kant assumes that there is objective
reality which can validate a truth, be understood through knowledge, and can be reached by rational
a free thought. Second, it is claimed that there is a monadic individual subject who is capable of
undergoing that process of enlightenment. These two underlying ideas are both contested by both
texts.
Gulliver’s Travels undermines the narrative structure which is meant to convey a form of knowledge,
calling into question the forms and dominant organisations which guarantee and ensure progress
through satire and mistrust. The idea of a rational approach of the objective is totally undermined by
what Novak calls a breaking of the “fictional contract” (74). The expectation that Gulliver mediates
the relationship between the reader and the text is undermined by his manifest unreliability,
meaning that the supposedly straightforward referential purpose of language is made more
complicated. Gulliver does not communicate the objective situation of the text to the reader, and
the existence of an objective text beyond Gulliver’s own narration comes into question. Narration,
rather than being the precondition of communication between text and reader, is made unreliable
by Swift – to the point that narration seems to be the sum of the text itself. The mechanics of satire,
as observed by Sullivan, deny Gulliver any consistency.
At any given moment, Gulliver's "meaning" depends upon Swift's particular satiric target or
intention. Gulliver, in other words, is not a novelistically consistent and developing
character. To read him as such is to turn a blind eye to Swift's technique and to many of the
satiric meanings Swift is striving to convey.
(Houyhnhnms and Yahoos: From Technique to Meaning 500)
The generic requirements of satire seem to problematize the idea of a narrator functioning to
communicate and refer between reader and text. When the structure of narration itself begins to
fall apart, the idea of attaining an objective reality through representational language becomes
increasingly difficult to sustain. Novak can argue that Gulliver never leaves home, and it is almost
impossible to present a strong counter-argument, because there is no objective knowledge to
reference the argument to. Swift uses Gulliver, at times quite overtly, to satirise a credulous reader:
“some of them are so bold as to think my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and
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have gone so far as to drop hints, that the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos have no more existence than
the inhabitants of Utopia.” Using fiction’s intermediate status as a puzzle with no objective reference
(perhaps we could say literature as referring to utopia), Swift disrupts the claims of realism to create
a text in parallel to reality, accessible through narration. The satirical elements of this disruption are
inevitable, and best seen as Gulliver moves from a privileged position within literary realism to being
the object of total ridicule.
Several of this cursed brood getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree;
from whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head: however, I escaped
pretty well, by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with the filth;
which fell about me on every side.
(169)
By part 4 the narrative position is no longer a trusted intermediary, but an object of ridicule who is
huddled under a tree whilst supernaturally athletic horses defecate on him from above. This
spectacle of debasement leads into questions of subjectivity. Evidently the text is not only a satire on
the representational demands paced on language, it is also a satire of the subject. As Novak argues,
Gulliver becomes “a satiric imagine of the inflated status of the subject in modern fiction”. As an
inflated subject, however, the question of Gulliver’s humanity or Yahoo-ity come to the fore. For
Kant, humans given freedom of public reason become positive political actors, who contribute to a
public sphere and the formation of politics through reason. The possibility of this form of humanity,
however, is not a foregone conclusion within Gulliver’s Travels.
Here the debates of the hard and soft school are particularly relevant: if humanity are, at best,
debased Yahoos then the enlightenment fixation on the individual subject seems to be satirised, but
if a positive image of humanity can be rescued from the text then it might yet be validated. But there
is perhaps common ground to be found. After all, the enlightenment subject is judged by their ability
to reason and participate in progress rather than overt moral worth. In this sense the quality of the
human – as argued by either hard or soft school – comes second to Gulliver’s unreliability. If he
cannot even sustain a narrative contract then how is he to be relied upon to think rationally? The
fallibility of the human, however it is morally inflected, is what condemns enlightenment subject.
In Tristram Shandy, the problems of knowledge are not exposed through a satire of narrative
structure, but through the entire text itself. The creation and formation of structures, of works of art
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is actually all a way of proving the inability to attain knowledge. Soud’s argument about labyrinths in
Tristram Shandy is a useful way into discussions of epistemology, particularly through his discussion
of fortification. His understanding of fortification as a desire to impose order which results in the
construction of immense complexity as a way of representing and codifying knowledge. Toby’s
bowling green labyrinth is the artistic expression of a desire for order, what Melvyn New might see
as the multitude organising the muddle:
The world that Sterne represents may be a muddle as has been suggested, but it is peopled
by multitudes (inside the book and holding the book) with brooms and pens, petites canulles
and swords, diagrams and models and paradigms, all intent on tidying up the place, making
it neat and clear.
(Sterne and the Narrative of Determinatedness 320)
However, the vital point New misses here, and which Sound identifies, is that the construction of
labyrinths which attempt to simplify the muddle only causes the muddle to begin all over again.
New’s attempt to move from an “epistemology of indeterminacy” to an “ontology of the human
urge to speak the truth” (329) fails to understand that the attempts of elements within the fiction to
produce coherence does not guarantee that the tendency of the text is towards determination.
Attempts at determination can lead directly to indetermination. It is this dynamic which stops Toby
reaching Namur, and that condemn him to be lost within the machinery of determination he has
created. “His attempts to cut the knot become labyrinthine knots themselves” (Sound 406) and in
this circular process the farce of enlightenment knowledge is made clear. The dominant challenge to
progress, is that the act of progress cancels itself out. If Kant talks about enlightenment as jumping a
ditch, Sterne suggests that every jump creates another ditch to be jumped, and as such the
encounter with objective knowledge is forever suspended by the process of thought, organisation
and fortification. Reason only seems to frustrate itself.
the many perplexities he was in, arose out of the almost insurmountable difficulties he
found in telling his story intelligibly, and giving such clear ideas of the differences and
distinctions between the scarp and counterscarp,—the glacis and covered-way,—the halfmoon and ravelin,—as to make his company fully comprehend where and what he was
about.
[…]
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What rendered the account of this affair the more intricate to my uncle Toby, was this,—
that in the attack of the counterscarp, before the gate of St. Nicolas, extending itself from
the bank of the Maes, quite up to the great water-stop,—the ground was cut and cross cut
with such a multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all sides,—and he would get
so sadly bewildered, and set fast amongst them, that frequently he could neither get
backwards or forwards to save his life; and was oft-times obliged to give up the attack upon
that very account only.
Every act of explanation is also an act which makes the possibility of progress remote. This isn’t to
say that the novel laments this lack – in fact, absolute knowledge is a distraction, removed from the
praxis of living and creation which takes priority over it. The story of the attack is not rendered
pointless by the fact that Toby has to cut it short due to his own confusion, it becomes more
intricate due to its hesitations and incompleteness. There is a shift from the enlightenment focus on
using language as an instrument to produce outcomes to valuing the act of storytelling for its
inconclusive meanderings. Throughout Tristram Shandy we are told stories, read letters and involved
in conversations which never reach a culmination, instead they have no fixed end and begin to
merge. This is how languages is treated as autotelic rather than instrumental. If the act of leaping
seems to only create another ditch, in a chain where reference never quite reaches its object, how
does the enlightenment subject fare?
Perhaps predictably, this dimension of progress is just as undermined as objective knowledge.
Nietzsche’s comments on the novel are an interesting way into the affective reading experience: “So
in the proper reader he arouses a feeling of uncertainty whether he be walking, lying, or standing, a
feeling most closely akin to that of floating in the air” (Human All Too Human 113). This uncertainty
is not only the loss of solid referents in the domain of objective knowledge, but also the
disorientation of a collective assemblage. “Floating” is part of losing the denial of a singular coherent
subjectivity which the novel engages in. Not only does the leap fail to reach the ground of objective
knowledge, but the subject that begins the leap loses its coherence in the act of leaping.
'Tis a point settled,—and I mention it for the comfort of Confucius, who is apt to get
entangled in telling a plain story—that provided he keeps along the line of his story,—he
may go backwards and forwards as he will,—'tis still held to be no digression.
This being premised, I take the benefit of the act of going backwards myself.
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(345)
The fluidity of narrative doesn’t only mean that Tristram Shandy can contain narrative reversals, but
also that subjects can be shuffled about and broken up almost at will. The playfulness with which
Sterne breaks conventions and expectations challenges the notion of a singular subject that come
into relationship with the world and with knowledge. The community of the text is a multitude of
readers (some allowed to continue, some told to re-read, some addressed as critics) authors
(Tristram himself but also the authors of numerous inserted texts) and characters (figures from
stories within the text alongside the main characters themselves). They connect and enmesh in a
chaotic organisation which ruptures any structure of coherence – be it a fortress, a Tristapedia, an
enlightenment subject or a singular critical hermeneutic. This subjectivity approximately describes
the Rhizomial structure, as explored by Deleuze and Guattari: “There is no longer a tripartite division
between a field of reality (the world) and the field of representation (the book) and a field of
subjectivity (the author). Rather, an assemblage establishes connections between certain
multiplicities drawn from each of these orders” (A Thousand Plateaus 24).
This similarity is a way into a comparison of the two texts. In particular, it seems useful to bring them
into relation with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor literature in order to further explore their
specifics and the differences between them.
The three characteristics of minor literature are the deterritorialization of language, the
connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of
enunciation. We might well say that minor no longer designated any specific literature but
the revolutionary conditions for every literature within the heart of what is called great(or
established) literature.
(Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature 18)
Gulliver’s Travels promotes no collective position against progress. It is savagely negative about the
capacity of the individual to be a reliable and rational literary construct, but it is not interested in
creating an alternative community. Therefore whilst it is not an endorsement of the individual, it
promotes not collective assemblage in its place. Tristram Shandy, however, does have a reference to
collective enunciation through intersubjectivity. It is this division between a satirical major literature
and a collective minor literature, allows us to structure an approach that can pay attention to the
exact nature of each novel’s opposition to progress.
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However, before we move on to understanding the ways in which readings of major and minor lit
diverge, we need to explore the concept of minority further. The category of minor literature is not
created through the expression of identity but through containment. When social space is restricted
and the space for representation is limited then minor literatures can be produced. In the eighteenth
century context, this means that as the enlightenment and progress sought to form new
epistemological organisation it restricted the space available to other forms of knowledge through
the spread of realism and the major literary practices of reference and mimesis. Tristram Shandy’s
minor response is to contest the restriction of knowledge and open the way towards other
epistemological stances or uncertainty, intersubjectivity and confusion. This newly opened space
had room for a minority people – a heterodox collective which resists dominant forms of knowledge.
In this sense, Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of “the literary machine thus becomes a relay
for a revolutionary machine-to-come” (18) is best thought of in terms of an anti-tradition of minor
knowledges which are, through the creation of minority space, allowed to co-exist in a collective1.
Their revolutionary suggestion is an epistemological one, whereby the ground of knowing codified
by the majority is undermined in its very legitimacy, not just its current formation. This potential
should be contrasted with the politics of satire as formed by Swift. Its challenge to epistemology acts
not as a minor subversion but an opposition within the field of the major. Satirical opposition which
uses the failure of the narrative contract as a way of making difficult the claims of realism acts as a
negative highlighting, which by presenting a ridiculous externality reflects back on the realist novel.
It proposes no new schema of knowledge and forms no collective, but instead throws light on the
problematic unspoken elements of progress and realism. In doing so it does not contest the
legitimacy of the epistemological formation of progress, but rather contexts its exact form and the
ways in which it remains unaware of itself.
It’s on this basis that we can start to differentiate between Tristram Shandy and Gulliver’s Travels.
For example, their relationship to the political is radically divided along the line of major/minor. The
Tory/Whig parliamentary structures the field of the political in relation to these novels to such an
extent that it can be hard – from the standpoint of much existing criticism - to imagine Tristram
1
Hart suggests an “anti-tradition of unclassifiable books” which stretches from Sterne to Joyce, and this is the
kind of collective we should imagine as a minority: those texts which are excluded through their minority
status. This anti-tradition should be seen in contrast to the major canon, as made explicit by Leavis in The
Great Tradition “Sterne, in whose irresponsible (and nasty) trifling, regarded as in some way extraordinarily
significant and mature, was found a sanction for attributing value to other trifling” (2)
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Shandy or Gulliver’s Travels having a politics which moves beyond the parliamentary. The
identification of Tristram Shandy with a minor literature, however, should make obvious the
necessity of moving beyond this restriction in order to explore more peripheral ideas of the politics
of minor epistemology and the associated processes of becoming-minoritarian. For Tristram Shandy,
the rehabilitation of its minority stance into a plainly contextual political reading is not a sufficient
engagement. This is not to say that a close contextual study of the points of reference between the
novel and its historical context is illegitimate, but rather to suggest that there are other readings
which might open the novel up to new modes of studying the political. The interesting elements of
Tristram Shandy are not just referential, they have a value and an autonomy as political agents in
their own right. We shouldn’t aim to make the political remote and remove it from the text itself by
turning it into a game of reference.
The reliance of enlightenment and progress upon the underlying premises of objective knowledge
and individual subjects means that the problems thrown up by Gulliver’s Travels and Tristram
Shandy have a clear focus. In both cases they contest progress in their structure, on a deeper level
than just overt content. This leads to a rejection of enlightenment epistemology but, as we’ve seen,
this rejection is not identical – and in line with Deleuze and Guattari it seems important to classify
these responses as major and minor respectively. This differentiation allows us to read the problems
they cause sensitive to the specifics of each text rather than just homogenising both. With Tristram
Shandy, the clear imperative is to produce political interpretations which move beyond immediate
context. In this sense, we have to treat Tristram Shandy as a truly creative text: one which does not
only response and object, but also proposes its own ideas and epistemologies. It is this creativity
which contains the real politics of the text. In their rejection of the framework of enlightenment,
Swift and Sterne share an approach – but we should be alert to the different styles of critical
response which each favours.
2975 words
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