The labyrinth of memories in Tristram Shandy and the surrealist procedures

Abstract

The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman, by Laurence Sterne, is a rupture novel that launched narrative devices that were to be consolidated as moderns, in distinct areas. Therefore, the present work proposes a connection between shandyan writing and the ideals of surre­alism, in ways shown by André Breton about artists of previous periods who were as much surrealists as the movement founders. Their ideals of the totality of thought to achieve free writing, automatic writing, as well as the reaching of an abso­lute reality, were spread to many countries and surpassed barriers of temporality, projecting themselves into the contemporaneity. In this way, the present pa­per, starting from concepts by Walter Benjamin, ana­lyzes the resistance of this form of memory use that characterizes authors such as Aragon and others surreal­ists, but that had its beginning with the digressive novel by Laurence Sterne.