The contrast of town and village life in laurence stern’s novels content: Introduction chapter I. The British novelist Laurence Sterne

Chapter II. The contrast of town and village life in Laurence Stern’s novels
2.1. Structure of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
This article explores how changing ideas about time and time-telling had a powerful and lasting impact upon the literature of the long eighteenth century (i.e., c. 1660–c. 1830). After a brief overview of the dominant technological, scientific, and philosophical preoccupations, the discussion concentrates on influential recent critical studies of topics such as the relationship between clock time and narrative structure in the novels of Samuel Richardson and Laurence Sterne, the appearance of poetical subgenres directly inspired by mechanical timepieces, and the characteristic skepticism of certain Romantic authors toward the alleged merits of temporal rationalization. Although most of these studies have focused on how the (quasi-)isochronicity of pocket watches and pendulum clocks directly influenced particular literary forms, structures, and themes, this article concludes by arguing that the relationship between literature and time was (in fact) partially reciprocal, and that the former therefore sometimes profoundly altered contemporaneous attitudes toward the practical business of time-telling.
Due to a bewildering array of practical and theoretical concerns, the definition, measurement, and deployment of time was an abiding preoccupation throughout the long eighteenth century (c. 1660–c. 1830). Several simple yet ingenious devices, such as sundials and sandglasses, had been used to quantify time for centuries prior to this period; mechanical clocks had begun to be installed in European churches and cathedrals from the fourteenth century onward, while the first watches had been constructed and worn during the Renaissance. However, the distinctive and pervasive fixation with time and time-telling that characterized the long eighteenth century was directly prompted by the horological revolution of the 1650s, when Christiaan Huygens introduced pendulum clocks and watches with balance springs, thereby reducing the daily inaccuracy of such timepieces from minutes to seconds. As a result, (quasi-)isochronicity became an attainable goal, and there followed a period of rapid technical “consolidation and expansion.”¹ Better escapement mechanisms were developed to control the transference of stored energy (e.g., “anchor” c. 1670, “dead-beat” 1715, “detent” 1752), minute and second hands were added to display smaller temporal subdivisions (c. 1680 onward), and precision chronometers—such as John Harrison’s celebrated “H4” (1759), which enabled longitude to be calculated at sea—were created to serve a wide range of practical purposes. The speed of change was startling, and, due to the mastery of makers such as Thomas Tompion, Daniel Quare, George Graham, Thomas Mudge, John Arnold, and Thomas Earnshaw, Britain rapidly established itself as world leader in clock and watch manufacture. In the early years of this period, timepieces of this kind were still a source of considerable wonder and delight, as Samuel Pepys demonstrated in 1665:
But Lord, to see how much of my old folly and childishnesse hangs upon me still, that I cannot forbear carrying my watch in my hand in the coach all this afternoon, and seeing what a-clock it is 100 times. And am apt to think with myself: how could I be so long without one—though I remember since, I had one and found it a trouble, and resolved to carry one no more about me while I lived.²
Pepys’s astonishment is tempered by his recollection of past “trouble,” and this ambivalence is strongly characteristic of the period. In the 1660s, pocket watches and domestic clocks were exotic (often inaccurate) playthings for the social elite; rural and urban communities were regulated mainly by natural diurnal cycles and church bells, and Britain was divided into many different local time zones. By the 1830s, however, reliable timepieces were owned by the middle and lower classes, time-telling had been largely secularized, and a national “mean” time, which guaranteed synchronicity in trade and travel, was being devised. This relentless process of “temporal rationalization” influenced the practices of powerful emerging sociopolitical infrastructures—like those associated with the industrial revolution—that relied on strict time-based regulation.³
While clock- and watchmakers sought to improve the accuracy of their wares, philosophers (whether of the “natural” variety or not) debated different definitions and contrasting theoretical models of time. In developing his radical theory of mechanics, for instance, Isaac Newton argued that “[a]bsolute, true, and mathematical time” was distinct from “relative, apparent and common time,” the latter being merely a measure of the duration of motion.⁴ This bold ontological distinction made it possible for him to develop a universal system, but many of his contemporaries remained unconvinced. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz famously favored a more ideational, relational, and relativistic analysis of time, while the very idea that time “flows uniformly” caused George Berkeley to become “lost and embrangled in inextricable Difficulties.”⁵ John Locke and fellow empiricists contended that it was “the fleeting and perpetually perishing parts of Succession” that enabled us to acquire “distinct Ideas, as Hours, Days, Years, &c., Time and Eternity,” yet none of them managed to develop a sufficiently robust account of the role that memory plays in this mysterious process.⁶ Aware of these complexities, David Hume reconsidered the relationship between temporality and causation, and his work greatly influenced Immanuel Kant’s theorizing. In particular, in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason; 1781), Kant proposed that time and space are both a priori forms of sensibility, at once empirically real and transcendentally ideal.⁷ Inevitably, a wide range of post-Kantian perspectives emerged during the early nineteenth century, some of which influenced philosophers and scientists such as Henri-Louis Bergson, Albert Einstein, and Henri Poincaré.⁸
Even given this brief and necessarily selective summary, it should be apparent why so many writers of the period became fascinated by the definition, quantification, and social functions of time. Literature provided opportunities for exploring different chronological schemes, whether earnestly or whimsically, and countless novels, poems, plays, and essays of the period both scrutinized and exemplified the temporal practices and sensibilities of the age. In some cases, this can be discerned in the changing conventions of literary production itself. The advent of periodical publications, such Joseph Addison’s and Richard Steele’s The Spectator (1711–14), popularized new patterns of cyclic literary consumption (whether daily, weekly, or monthly), which, in turn, imposed strict regularities upon the activities of writing and reading. In other cases, it is the themes and methodologies of the works of literature themselves that reveal the underlying preoccupations of their authors. Aino Mökikalli has recently shown that, for Daniel Defoe, “the problem of time [was] seminally intertwined with the Christian concept of eternity and that of secular time,” while Samuel Richardson declared that his own epistolary novels offered “a new Manner of Writing—to the Moment,” a technique that brought narrative time and narrated time into unprecedentedly close proximity.⁹ The increasingly frequent references to very specific times of the day in novels such as Richardson’s are due to clocks and watches enabling hours, minutes, and seconds to be monitored with unprecedented precision, even in domestic environments—and the consequences of this were not only apparent in novels. Indeed, the emergence of a distinct subgenre of poems addressed directly to watches offered a range of new analogies. In a 1760 poem, the Baptist hymnodist Anne Steele wished to be “useful and progressive” in order to “regulate” her heart, and the manual task of winding her watch each evening provided an exemplum:

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  When I wind thee up at night,
  
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  Mark each fault and set thee right,
  
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  Let me search my bosom too,
  
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  And my daily thoughts review;
  
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  Mark the movements of my mind,
  
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  Nor be easy till I find
  
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  Latent errors brought to view,
  
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  Till all be regular and true.¹⁰
  

Here mechanical engineering provides a template for spiritual reflection, but the human-machine parallels drawn in other “To My Watch” poems were not always so meditatively therapeutic. In 1831 Walter Savage Landor noted an acute asynchronicity when he addressed his timepiece: “[h]ow ill agree thy motion and my heart’s.”¹¹ Far from providing a steady and reliable model for his own behavior, the relentless ticking frustrated him: “[g]o, sole companion of a joyless bed, / Nor drive the slumbers from this frantic head.”¹² This poignant couplet reveals something of the intimacy that could characterize the curious relationships between writers and their watches, and further insights can be gleaned by considering those works of literature that were written to be displayed in, or on, specific time-telling devices. Pair-case watches were introduced in the 1670s, and they had an outer protective case that offered a small concave space into which circular “watch-paper” could be inserted. Such papers often exhibited advertisements or simple decorative patterns, but they also frequently contained bespoke poems. These so-called watch-paper poems were intimate and amorous, or didactic and moralizing, and analogies between humans and machines were common. Isabella Lickbarrow included these lines in her “Verses Intended for a Watch Paper” (1814):

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  The mind of man, like this machine,
  
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  Has various moving springs unseen;
  
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  Strong feelings which affect him still,
  
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  And prompt him both to good and ill.¹³
  

There is an awareness here, perhaps, of the controversial debates that had been given impetus in the 1630s when, fascinated by Salomon de Caus’s celebrated mechanical fountain in the gardens of St. Germain-en-Laye, René Descartes had philosophized about the differences between humans, animals, and machines.¹⁴ An extreme view had been propounded by Julien Offray de la Mettrie in his notorious L’homme machine (1747), and arguments about such matters raged throughout the long eighteenth century.¹⁵ By contrast, some of the texts written to be displayed on clocks and watches were more concerned with morality than mechanism. This practice arose from the ancient tradition of affixing mottos (often rather hectoring ones, such as carpe diem or tempus fugit) to sundials.¹⁶ However, as the eighteenth century progressed, the texts became more elaborate and were written in English, though they were still tightly constrained by the confines of the available physical space. In October 1809, Coleridge was asked to produce a few lines for a market-place clock, and (so the story goes) he uttered the following “literally, without a moment’s premeditation”:

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  What now, O Man! Thou dost, or mean’st to do
  
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  Will help to give thee Peace or make thee rue,
  
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  When hovering o’er the Dot this hand shall tell
  
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  The moment, that secures thee HEAVEN or HELL!¹⁷
  

This quatrain is didactic in tone (honoring the tradition), yet the present and eternity are related quasi-paradoxically. The prominent temporal adverb “now” reinforces the immanence of “[t]he moment,” showing that the actions and intentions of a single instant can have eternal consequences, while the past is deemed to be entirely irrelevant for the purposes of salvation. Coleridge appears to have had a taste for such miniatures. Twenty years later, he produced an “Inscription on a Timepiece,” once again combining adverbs and tenses with subtle dexterity:

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  Now! It is gone.—Our Moments travel post,
  
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  Each with it’s [sic] deed or thought, it’s what? and how?
  
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  But, know! each parting Hour gives up a Ghost,
  
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  May live within thee, an Eternal NOW.¹⁸
  

The sudden transition from the initial “[n]ow!” to “[i]t is gone” is disorientating, as is the rapid shift from the singular “[i]t” to the plural “[o]ur moments,” and the oxymoronic notion of an everlasting instant mystically destabilizes any conventional chronological framework. Despite their status as “occasional” pieces, when these mottos were eventually published posthumously in 1836, they were rightly considered to be “pretty little pieces in verse.”¹⁹
As these examples demonstrate, many literary works explored different aspects of time and time-telling during the long eighteenth century, yet Laurence Sterne’s masterpiece The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67) remains a central focal point for critical studies of the relationship between time and literature—and deservedly so, since its playful appraisal of the artificialities and limitations of linear temporal progression readily invites multiple responses.²⁰ The notorious opening, in which Walter Shandy is asked by his wife (during coitus) whether he has wound the long-case clock, brings inner psychological temporalities and natural reproductive biorhythms into direct conflict with the recently established rituals of (quasi-)isochronic time-keeping. Similar disruptions continue unabated in many subsequent chapters, when they are complicated further by Sterne’s teasing contrasts between the quantifiable chronological development of an individual life and the multiple parallel temporal schemes that necessarily result from the writing and reading of literature:
I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of the fourth volume—and no farther than to my first day’s day—’tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four more days to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it—on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back—was every day of my life to be as busy as this—And why not?—and the transactions and opinions of it to take up as much description—And for what reason should they be cut short? at this rate I should just live 364 times faster than I should write—It must follow, an’ please your worships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to write—and consequently, the more your worships read, the more your worships will have to read.²¹
This forbidding calculation humorously highlights a perplexing temporal paradox that afflicts all uncommon writers. As this example demonstrates, Tristram Shandy is (to use Christoph Henke’s apposite description) a novel that is fundamentally “about the passing and bypassing of time; about time jumps and delays; about anachronisms and synchronisms; about subjective mind-time and objective clock-time; about writing-time and life-time; ultimately, as metafiction, about story-time and text-time.”²² However, even this lengthy catalogue is far from comprehensive. Clark Lawlor remarked, wearily, that “[o]ne would think that the subject of time in Sterne, especially in Tristram Shandy, had been entirely exhausted,” but this did not stop him arguing that the narrative is also influenced by the “idiosyncratic rhythms” of disease.²³ Sterne’s anxieties about time and time-telling were playfully serious, and some of them acquired a more strident resonance as the Enlightenment segued into the romantic period. William Blake’s infernal proverb is well known—”the hours of folly are measur’d by the clock, but of wisdom, no clock can measure”—and so is William Wordsworth’s interest in the subjective psychological temporalities associated with those strange “spots of time / Which with distinct pre-eminence retain / A vivifying Virtue.”²⁴ In their different ways, therefore, Blake and Wordsworth are expressing dissatisfaction with the relentlessly periodic divisions displayed on the faces of ticking clocks and watches—but the second generation of Romantics was sometimes even more belligerently dismissive. In Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, (past) Time himself dies and is carried by a chorus of deceased hours “to his tomb in eternity.”²⁵ This vibrant attempt to unshackle temporality from periodic quantification embodies a distinctly romantic hankering for what Stuart Curran has described as “everlasting day” (also manifest in Coleridge’s aforementioned “Eternal NOW!”), and such longings sometimes seem to constitute “attempts to escape from time.”²⁶ These inclinations intertwine closely, of course, with contemporaneous ideological reevaluations of diachronic progression over longer durations, which produced an “emergent sense of historical discontinuity” in which the present often seemed to be separated from the past.²⁷