". . . Sterne's associational method moves from oddity to expectancy. Repetition allows the reader to recognize that the element of structure represents a way of expressing epistmology, a manner of evaluating the significance of events, and a means of achieving a reality closer to human experience than that acheived by more conventional novelistic treatments of causality." (53. Spector, Robert D. "Structure as a Starting Point." Approaches to Teaching Sterne's Tristram Shandy. New, Melvyn, ed. New York: MLA, 1989. 49-54)
Tristram Shandy had a very strong influence on many of the modern and post-modern writers of the twentieth century, including James Joyce and Virginia Woolfe. It also influenced Charles Dickens and Nikolai Gogol, and others.
In addition to novelists, Tristram Shandy has had a strong influence on Internet technologies such as hypertext, the backbone of the World-Wide Web, and web logging, or blogging.
I have included here several examples of web log sites that are influenced by Tristram Shandy. I chose blog sites because they exhibit the forms and types of digression that exist in Tristram Shandy. Blogs tend to have a major theme, but they jump around a lot based on the whims and pleasures of the writer. They are pointless without a reader, especially one who will devote the effort it takes to follow along and participate in the topics being discussed. Blogs exemplify Tristram's comments on the writer/reader relationship:
"Writing when it is properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all;- so no author...would presume to think all: The truest respect you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve the matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn as well as yourself."
Tristram Shandy has had a strong influence on many World-wide Web sites. The ideas behind the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) show strong ties to the ideas Sterne was experimenting with in the novel. I discuss more about those links here.
On this page, I present several instances of individual web sites in the spirit ofTristram Shandy. Web site authors generally show a strong awareness of the reader. They talk with the reader and they present their material so that it is accessible to the readers needs. In writing Tristram Shandy, Sterne was attemping to speak to readers in this same fashion. He was trying to present on paper what we are now capable of presenting on a computer screen. He was trying to move the center of power from those who traditionally are writers - government, clergy - and give some of that power to the common man. Web sites that allow interaction of some sort, whether by providing links with background information or providing a community bulletin board or the ability to look for any information a reader has a mind to find, bring information under the control of the consumer/reader rather than the producer/author.
The novel's crazed style style of short chapters, continuous digressions, and satyric humor, all while carrying a form of story line has been reproduced in other media beyond the tradition of print. A lot of what Sterne experimented with shows that he was interested in finding other ways, beyond the traditional printed page, to tell a story.
The story has been reproduced as a comic book, or graphic novel, as well as a movie and a radio program. It has also influenced television shows such as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and Seasame Street which used short digressive skits while maintaining a common, though often tenuous, theme throughout the show.
Tristram Shandy has had a strong influence on many writers since the first volume was published in 1759. Of particular note are the modern writers such as James Joyce and Virgina Woolfe. Nikolai Gogol wrote a play entitled "The Nose" thought to have been inspired by Tristram Shandy