Written 264 years ago by an Anglican preacher, this novel, which subverts narrative conventions and readers' expectations, contains real and fabricated documents such as sermons, excommunication certificates, marriage contracts, various drawings, blank, black or marbled pages, flow charts, sections that have been moved or not written at all, where many of these fictional techniques are used for the first time and skilfully, the most modern of the 18th century novels and one of the earliest examples of postmodern literature before modernism existed. Marx even attempted to write a humorous novel inspired by the book at the age of 19.
The novel is an experiment in narrative form as well as a parody of the traditional 18th century novel. Tristram Shandy is essentially the story of a man called Tristram who is trying to write his own life story, but keeps getting side-tracked and distracted. The unique chronology and remarkable digressive-progressive style of Tristram Shandy are its most conspicuous formal and technical elements. The author narrates the story in a non-chronological manner, with events given out of sequence and even in reverse chronological order at times. The protagonist freely wanders back and forth in time throughout the story. He also digresses so much that story components fade into the background; the novel is filled with long essay-like passages that attract attention to what is happening or, more often than not, to something altogether else. Tristram focuses our attention to the development of his authorial endeavor in the moments when he appears to have traveled the furthest by claiming that his narrative is both divergent and progressive.
The stories of Mr. and Mrs. Shandy, Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman, as well as