Locke's effect on Laurence sterne's novel Tristram Shandy

Abstract EN

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) was an English novelist , humorist , and a clergyman in York for many years before his talent became apparent.

He wrote Tristram Shandy (1759-1767), an experimental novel, issued in nine parts .

The story was subordinate to its narrator's free associations and digressions .

It was considered as one of the most important ancestors of the psychological and the stream -consciousness of fiction.

By dramatic changing of chronological and psychological durations, he emphasized the dual nature of time.

When an individual's response was reasonable.

Sterne 's work was influenced by John Locke's assumptions, when he dealt less with the passage of time as the clock measures it than with mental time.

When the events move less quickly than clock time.

Sterne's beliefs were accomplished by Locke's theory, when the mind and its "representation of the world stand against the Newtonian Belief in a world that is attainable and capable of being measured by clockwork standards"( Jefferson, 1968 :10) The aim of this paper is to discuss the duality of two poles of time; the time of clock and the time of thought) shedding light on the effect of Locke's idea of duration on Sterne's mind, and how he the writer made it applicable.