56 It is obvious that Tristram Shandy contains a lot of intertextual references, both to older and to contemporary texts. It is often said that the difficulty of interpreting Tristram Shandy lies in the nature of this synthesis (Anderson). I do not think that the synthesis itself is the cause of trouble, but rather the way it is presented. The text itself remains completely indifferent to these references with regard to what purpose they serve, which makes it impossible to eventually understand their function in the story. This mode of handling outside references is distinctly eccentric.

57 A good example is the reference to philosophy. One of the major questions in philosophy during Sterne’s times was how we perceive the outside world and if our mental concepts form a correct representation of objective reality. When we think of how Sterne depicts his characters as perceiving the world only insofar as the information matches with their hobby-horses, we have one of these references. However, it is completely unobvious why the novel does this. Most interpreters, in Sterne’s time as well as nowadays, see it as a kind of mockery and relate it to the literary technique of the mock-heroic prominent in Sterne’s days. But even if it is mockery, the text gives us no clue as to why it is being employed, apart from leading a philosophical question ad absurdum. Another reference, where it is even more unusual, is Tristram’s reference to John Locke with regard to his doctrine of the association of ideas, which Tristram employs to explain why his mother was not paying proper attention during Tristram’s conception. Usually, Tristram’s father winds up the clock before turning to “some other little family concernments.” In the night Tristram is conceived, however, Walter feels a certain need quite strongly and forgets to wind up the clock prior to going to bed with his wife, which in turn leads to her not being in the proper mood. Tristram explains this by referring to Locke, who claims that through a process of habituation certain ideas get associated in a way that whenever the first occurs, the second one follows immediately. This Tristram claims to be the case with his mother, who “could never hear the said clock wound up,– but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popp’d into her head – & vice versâ” (I 4, 5). All of this is certainly funny because Locke’s philosophical theory is here applied to such a mundane pair of ideas, but again we are left with the question to what purpose Sterne uses it.

58 Thus, although we have several sorts of references to other works in Tristram Shandy, the text remains completely indifferent with regard to the question why it refers to them in the first place. They simply are there, but they are not placed in a sort of tension with other texts or values. The novel itself is the only point of reference, and, very much like the characters, all outside information is employed only insofar as it matches with the hobby-horse, so to speak, of the text itself.

59 Furthermore, Tristram Shandy is a good example of an eccentric text with regard to its communicative intent. Critics of Sterne’s age saw the novel mostly as a satire (cf. the collection of reviews in the Norton Critical Edition of Tristram Shandy, 471-484). Because of the individuality of his writing style, Sterne was in the early 19th century hailed as a very important predecessor of Romanticism. In the 20th century, however, critics became skeptical as to whether the satirical interpretation actually captures everything that is in the novel. Today, even such fundamental aspects are disputed as to whether Sterne actually completed Tristram Shandy (Booth) or to what genre it belongs (Olshin, for example, argues that Sterne in fact invented a new genre). Thus, it seems that the more we analyze and discuss Tristram Shandy, the more questions arise, none of which can be satisfactorily answered. This is, as I argued before, a situation which should make us ask whether this text might be an eccentric text, since the crucial feature of an eccentric text is – as a result of its indifference towards anything else apart from itself, including the reader – its missing message and its indifference to the question as to what the novel is about.

60 Laurence Sterne, it appears, was well aware of this aspect and anticipates the reaction of the reader in the last chapter of Tristram Shandy, where Obadiah tells the others (note that all main characters of the novel are present in this scene – except Tristram, who is not born yet) the story of his cow, which he expects to calve soon. Tristram’s mother, irritated by the various threads of the conversation, asks: “What is all this story about?” This, of course, is the same question the reader asks himself all throughout the novel. Sterne, aware of the double-meaning of the phrase, ingeniously puts an answer into Yorick’s mouth which captures at the same time both the final answer to the question of the communicative intent of Tristram Shandy and the ultimate proof that we are dealing with an eccentric text which remains indifferent to all objective meaning: “A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick