Hobbyhorsical Reading Gaits and Widows in Blank Pages. A Phenomenological Analysis of Tristram Shandy

FACULTAD de FILOSOFA Y LETRAS DEPARTAMENTO de FILOLOGA INGLESA Grado en Estudios Ingleses TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO Hobbyhorsical Reading Gaits and Widows in Blank Pages. A Phenomenological Analysis of Tristram Shandy Rubén Illera López Tutor: Mara Jos Carrera de la Red 2020-2021 Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 2 Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 3 ABSTRACT Among many issues, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759 - 1767, Tristram Shandy from here onwards) Laurence Sterne explores through the narrative voice of Tristram the subjects of writing, reading, and the reader’s experience. Wolfgang Iser in The Act of Reading explores in 1994 the same phenomenon from a theoretical perspective. In this BA Thesis, a qualitative analysis of the former using the theoretical tools of the latter has been carried out with a double focus. First, the process of entrainment has been used to describe the different gaits that Tristram aims to impart on readers. According to this view, Tristram seems to be trying to make readers conscious of their different reading approaches. Then, the blank page of the widow Wadman has been analysed as a blank that triggers and controls the reader’s activity. Keywords: Tristram Shandy, Phenomenology, entrainment, hobbyhorse, blanks, widow Wadman. Entre otras cuestiones, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759 - 1767, Tristram Shandy de aquí en adelante) de Laurence Sterne explora a través de la voz narrativa de Tristram los temas de la escritura, la lectura y la experiencia del lector. En The Act of Reading (1994), Wolfgang Iser explora el mismo fenómeno a través de una perspectiva teórica. En este Trabajo de Fin de Grado se ha llevado a cabo un análisis cualitativo del primero utilizando las herramientas teóricas del segundo con un doble objetivo. Primero, el proceso de entrainment o ‘inducción al ritmo’ se ha usado para describir las diferentes marchas que Tristram intenta impartir sobre sus lectores (en búsqueda de conocimiento o aventuras). Según este punto de vista, Tristram intenta hacer conscientes a los lectores de los diferentes estilos de lectura. Después, la página en blanco de la viuda Wadman ha sido analizado como un espacio en blanco que origina y controla la actividad de los lectores. Palabras Clave: Tristram Shandy, Fenomenología, entrainment, inducción al ritmo, espacios en blanco, viuda Wadman. Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 4 Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 7 CHAPTER 1: Theoretical Framework 9 1. Relevancy of reader reception theory to Tristram Shandy 9 2. Different approaches within reader reception theory 10 3. Iser’s phenomenological approach in relation to Tristram Shandy 15 a. The reader’s attitude 16 b. The reader’s experience 16 CHAPTER 2: This Itch of Reading 17 1. Definition of entrainment 17 2. Entrainment within the phenomenological analysis 18 3. Hobbyhorsical entrainment 19 4. Shifting gears 21 CHAPTER 3: The Widow Wadman: A Blank Page on a Blank 24 1. Is there a blank in this sentence? 24 2. A Portrait of the widow Wadman as a planned blank 24 3. Trigger warning 25 4. Not all those who wander are lost 26 5. Potency is nothing without control 28 CONCLUSION 30 BIBLIOGRAPHY 33 Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 6 Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 7 INTRODUCTION Reading is a means of listening. Reading is not as passive as hearing or viewing. It’s an act: you do it. You read at your pace, your own speed, not the ceaseless, incoherent, gabbling, shouting rush of the media. You take in what you can and want to take in, not what they shove at you so fast and hard and loud that you’re overwhelmed. Reading a story, you may be told something, but you’re not being sold anything. And though you’re usually alone when you read, you are in communion with another mind. You aren’t being brainwashed or coopted or used; you’ve joined in an act of the imagination. Ursula K. Le Guin. The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. Reading, some have suggested, is a cooperative act between author and reader, between reader and text. I see it as a hand-to-hand combat. Instinctively, uncontrollably, the reader always would strive to guess what the author has written. Prevented from this insatiable curiosity —the brain's fixation to foretell the future—, the writer has but two options: acquiesce with delivering the public just what is expected —the solutions of bestsellers and soap operas— or attempt to catch the reader by surprise at every moment by unexpected twists, by surprising solutions, by unprecedented aesthetic risks —the decision of the suspense professionals and true artists. Jorge Volpi. Mind Reading. (unpublished in English - own translation) The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a literary work that seeks to engage with the reader in a peculiar fashion. The narrator, Tristram, is not only aware of this fact, but he takes the time to explain the techniques he uses alongside the narrative in his also peculiar and satiric voice. A text centred in the effect it wants to create in the reader ought to be considered as a good match for the literary theories of the Reader Response theorists. It is not strange that the novel appears in Iser’s The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach (1972) and that Iser himself was in charge of applying his Reader Response theories to the novel in Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy (1988). Iser recommends looking at the conditions that favour the interaction between reader and text in order to understand the reader’s activity (1993, 31-32). Two conditions of that interaction will be analysed from Iser’s phenomenological point of view in this BA dissertation: the reader’s attitude and the blanks in the text. The involvement of the reader seems to be cryptically explained in the figure of the hobbyhorse; the most important blank in the text is that of the widow Wadman. The phenomenological analysis of Reader response theory has been extensively developed by Wolfgang Iser in The Act of Reading (1994). The self-explanatory second Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 8 chapter of Alsop and Walsh’s The Practice of Reading (1999) is titled: “The Role of the Reader: Tristram Shandy”. In her article “Reader as Hobby-horse in Tristram Shandy”, Helen Ostovich explores the idea of the proper attitude for the reader as a recalcitrant horse ridden by a temperamental jockey, the narrator Tristram. Piazza suggests in her article One of Many Doors: Sensing the Literary Sense through a Cognitive Poetics-Inclusive Reading Approach (2014) that the process of entrainment might be applied within Iser’s phenomenological approach. In this BA dissertation, the phenomenological approach is used as a proxy to explain the analogy of reading as a hobbyhorse. Iser’s concept of the blank and the reader’s wandering viewpoint are applied to the absence of the widow Wadman. The first objective is to search for the equivalence between the concept of entrainment and the hobbyhorsical relationship between reader and text (narrator). The second objective is to analyse the blank in the text that represents the widow Wadman and to understand how that influences the activity of the reader. Iser’s phenomenological analysis will be used as a backbone to describe the reader’s participation in the literary work. Because the nature of the novel’s narrator interpellates the reader, in-text citations will serve as a practical guide towards matching theory and practice. Sources from different fields of study such as Clayton’s What is Entrainment: Definition and applications in Musical Research (2012) will be used to define the concept of ‘entrainment’. Iser’s Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology(1993) will serve to explain how the blanks trigger and control the interaction between reader and text. The BA dissertation is structured in three chapters: the first chapter theoretically contextualizes the phenomenological approach within Reader Response theory; the second chapter applies the concept of entrainment to the hobbyhorsical relationship between text and reader in Tristram Shandy; and the third chapter deals with the blank of the widow Wadman and the reader’s wandering viewpoint. Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 9 CHAPTER 1: Theoretical Framework 1. Relevancy of Reader Reception theory to Tristram Shandy. Reader Reception theory (also called Reader Response theory) could be considered a turning point from “the formalism of New Criticism which exalted the text over both the author (to avoid the ‘intentional fallacy’) and the reader (to avoid the ‘affective fallacy’)” (Fowler 2001, 43). While it is not considered a single point of view methodology, it has placed the emphasis on the receptive side of the reading experience, the reader. “Reader-response criticism is not a conceptually unified critical position, but a term that has come to be associated with the work of critics who use the words reader, the reading process, and response to mark out an area for investigation” (Tompkins 1980, ix). Reader Reception theory then will naturally suit better literary works that by design place a greater weight on the reader than others, texts which are more conscious of the figure of the reader and the reading process. Talking about the appropriateness of using Reader Reception theory to analyse the Gospel of Mark and the text’s aim to “persuade or somehow affect the reader”, it is understood that: “As a form of literary criticism that focuses on the reader and the reading experience, reader-response criticism is well suited to deal with a text that takes aim at the reader at every step” (Fowler 2001, 23-24). Several excerpts of Tristram Shandy have been repeated to exhaustion in literature, especially by Reader Reception scholars. Perhaps, one of the most iconic (if not the most iconic one other than the incipit), and indeed most relevant for this paper is where Tristram explains his ethos about the relationship between reader and writer, intrinsically summarising his viewpoint about the reading process. WRiting, when 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, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself. For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own. (96) The reading process, according to Tristram, should be a combination of the imagination of both participants: reader and writer. The writer supplies but one half of the experience (the Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 16 a. The reader’s attitude In order to understand the reader’s dynamic mindset when approaching a literary work, we should note how Iser defines the position of the reader when facing the text. The fictitious reader is just one important strategy that serves to fix the position of the real reader. The latter is given a role to which he must then adapt and so 'modify himself' if the meaning he assembles is to be conditioned by the text and not by his own disposition. Ultimately, the whole purpose of the text is to exert a modifying influence upon that disposition, and so, clearly, the text cannot and will not merely reproduce it (1994, 153). In this sense, the reader needs to adapt him/herself to the conditions of the text, since the modifying influence is considerable in Tristram Shandy. There exists a term that defines processes of interaction called ‘entrainment’ that will be proposed to explain both —the reader’s disposition towards the novel— and the text’s influence over the reader in the analysis section of this dissertation. b. The blanks in the text Iser understands Ingarden’s places of indeterminacy as key to the activation of the relationship between text and reader, or reader participation (1993, 5-10). However, in the case of Iser, those places of indeterminacy are termed ‘blanks’. Those gaps in the text are also mentioned by Tristram in his own cryptic manner: Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read,—or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon—I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows, I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motly emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one. (203-204) The main idea that should be extracted from this excerpt is that the saint to be praised in Tristram Shandy is Paralipomenon (saint of things omitted) and not the god Muddle as E.M. Forster suggested (quoted in New 1992, 315). Therefore, Tristram is conscious of the importance of leaving gaps in his narrative, or ‘blanks’, using Iser’s terminology. Two main basic conditions of interaction will be studied: the process of entrainment represented in the hobbyhorse and the ‘blank’ represented in the blank page of the widow Wadman. Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 17 CHAPTER 2: This Itch of Reading 1. Definition of entrainment Clayton, Sager, and Will define ‘entrainment’ in the following manner: “Entrainment describes a process whereby two rhythmic processes interact with each other in such a way that they adjust towards and eventually ‘lock in’ to a common phase and/or periodicity.” (2). A popular case of this phenomenon is where two pendulum clocks synchronize by picking vibrations when placed nearby. For this to happen, there are two main conditions for the systems: they both must be autonomous, and they must interact. The concept of entrainment is studied in several disciplines: physics (the pendulum clocks), biology (fireflies illuminating in synchrony, the gait of humans and horses), linguistics (human individuals adjusting their speech rhythms to match each other in conversation), or anatomy (circadian rhythms that regulate the sleep-wake cycles of animals and/or humans) (Clayton 2012, 49-51; Pikovsky, Rosenblum, and Kurths 2001, 10-11). Furthermore, there is also the case of “endogenous or naturally occurring rhythms within the human body [that] include the heartbeat, blood circulation, respiration, locomotion, eyes blinking, secretion of hormones, female menstrual cycles, and many others” (3-6). Additionally, the case of entrainment without external stimulus, best known as ‘selfentrainment’ is another example of this phenomenon. Examples include legs and arms movement when walking, respiration, and heartbeat in swimmers, but also human speech (7). Nevertheless, the process of entrainment needs not to be physically displayed since its basis lies on brain activity (Walsh, 60). It is also important to note that while the two rhythmic processes need to be synchronised, oftentimes one of them is more powerful or dominant than the other, making the former the leader and the latter the follower or lagger. The patterns do not necessarily have to overlap but to maintain a consistent relationship with each other (Bluedorn 148, original in italics). Using Bluedorn’s terminology, Tristram would be the entraining rhythm and the reader would be the entrained rhythm. Tristram would set the gait (in search of knowledge or adventures) and the reader should aim for synchronicity. It is understood that the reading gait looking for knowledge is slower than the one in search of adventures. Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 18 2. Entrainment within the phenomenological analysis While the concept of entrainment is not commonly used in the domain of the literary studies, some authors have linked it to bridge the gap between narrative and music in terms of rhythm (Walsh 2011, 59; Wallbank, 2019, 362). Jessica Piazza has considered the idea of entrainment within Iser’s phenomenological approach in the following way: Psycholinguists, prosodists and phenomenologists veer away from computational and empirical evidence here to share a goal in one unique way: all are concerned with how the text itself can entrain both the body and mind of the reader to create experience (16). Piazza refers to the reader’s actions involved when responding to a text. What is important to note is that she considers that phenomenologists (among others) place an emphasis in the capacity of a text to entrain the reader. The proposal in this BA dissertation for Tristram Shandy will be limited to an entrainment of the reader’s mind without considering the reader’s body. Perhaps one of the most unusual relationships established in Tristram Shandy between Tristram and his readers is the fact that Tristram calls for a dyadic (bidirectional) interaction while, strictly speaking, only a unidirectional interaction is plausible. However, writing is conversing, according to him. The one-way interaction idea runs parallel to what Iser’s phenomenology proposes: An obvious and major difference between reading and all forms of social interaction is the fact that with reading there is no face-to-face situation. A text cannot adapt itself to each reader it comes into contact with. The partners in dyadic interaction can ask each other questions in order to ascertain how far their images have bridged the gap of the inexperienceability of one another’s experiences. The reader, however, can never learn from the text how accurate or inaccurate are his views of it (1993, 32). What is thought-provoking from a phenomenological point of view is that Tristram delves directly into this split between reading and face-to-face interaction, since he is not only aware of this impossibility, but aids the reader in such an exchange as the case of the madam reader who reads for adventures analysed in the theoretical framework. Further, the reader’s presence in the text is so conspicuous that (s)he participates in the dialogues as in the opening scene where the reader asks the famous sentence in the opening page of the novel, “—Pray, what was your father saying?” (6), implying that the conception of the novel follows a bidirectional or dyadic model. Iser also highlights this impossibility of interaction between text and reader, pointing out to a very Shandean theme: the text cannot adapt to each reader, but the reader needs to Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 19 adapt to the text and modify him/herself. What is more, the idea that the reader can not learn in hindsight whether his/her interpretations about the text are correct is challenged by the same re-reading passage analysed in the theoretical framework in page 12. Therefore, an analysis of this cleavage becomes the starting point of the phenomenological analysis. 3. Hobbyhorsical entrainment The hobbyhorse is a toy designed for children consisting of a wooden horse head attached to a stick. It is designed for children to pretend that they ride a horse, in some cases having reins attached. The allegory of the hobbyhorse is applied in different ways in the Shandean world. Perhaps the clearest manner to explain the hobbyhorse is as the fixation of every character when they answer to their inner nature or obsession. In the case of Uncle Toby, it is his compulsion to interpret every event or conversation through the prism of war, battlefields, and strategies. Walter’s passion is to have a philosophical reasoning behind all sorts of matters, be those the importance of names, noses, breeches, or else. To a large extent, Tristram’s infatuation, or hobbyhorse, is the reader. It follows then what Ostovich proposes as the relationship between reader and narrator: the reader is viewed as a recalcitrant (hobby)horse and Tristram as his temperamental jockey. Interestingly enough for this analysis, Ostovich’s metaphors describing the hobbyhorsical relationship between Tristram and the readers points towards processes of entrainment such as riding, dancing, and fornicating (325). It is necessary now to apply this idea to what Tristram asks of his readers towards the beginning of his narrative. Therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out,—bear with me,—and let me go on, and tell my story my own way:——or if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road, ——or should sometimes put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,--don’t fly off,—but rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;—and as we jogg on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do any thing,——only keep your temper (11). He gently requests of his readers that they align themselves with the story and the way he has decided to tell it. Furthermore, he requests that the reader continues to read as things seem to take unintended or unexplored ways: “bear with me”, “don’t fly off”, “as we jogg on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do any thing,——only keep your temper” (11). Tristram Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 20 reinforces the need of the reader to adapt to his seemingly nonsensical trials and tribulations, but nevertheless to keep calm and keep reading. Tristram will test the limits of the reader’s temper since the novel is anything but scant of narrative. Tristram seeks to entrain readers in different tempos with his narration. Jogging is an entrainment process as well. Perhaps, the hobbyhorsical relationship between Tristram and the reader is clearer in the following passage: I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author’s hands,––—be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore (164). The allegory crystalises here as the author taking the ‘reins’ of the ‘horse’s’ imagination. Furthermore, it can be comprehended from the passage that the author sets in motion the pace of synchronisation while the reader needs to phase-lock into that tempo. Indeed, Tristram would also make an emphasis towards a reading for knowledge while chastising the reading for adventures, though being conscious of the necessity of the forward push of the narrative. What is more, in the following extract, Tristram gives his opinion about his own hobbyhorse, the reader’s experience of being ridden through the narrative. For my hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him——’Tis the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for the present hour—a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddle-stick—an uncle Toby’s siege—or an any thing, which a man makes a shift to get a stride on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life––’Tis as useful a beast as is in the whole creation—nor do I really see how the world could do without it (530). The previous excerpt comes after Tristram contraposes his father’s hobbyhorse with his own. Unlike Walter’s reasonings that are stubborn and often contradictory, Tristram’s own hobbyhorse represents a harmless ride on the narrative (though satirical at times) in the form of digressions represented by maggots, butterflies, pictures, fiddle sticks or an Uncle Toby’s siege or amour, that keep the reader turning pages. The reading experience or ride is different when Tristram or Walter are the jockeys of the narrative. Tristram’s control of the reader is a given in his eyes. This is particularly obvious at the end of the first volume, in its chapter XXV, where he addresses the reader and overtly prides himself of keeping the reader off balance and in a state of uncertainty: What these perplexities of my uncle Toby were,——’tis impossible for you to guess;—if you could,—I should blush; not as a relation,—not as a man,—nor even as a woman,—but I should blush as an author; inasmuch as I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at any thing. And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 21 a humour, that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page,—I would tear it out of my book (69-70). What is important from this excerpt is that Tristram aims to keep readers off balance and in guard so that they are able to switch between the gaits of reading for adventures and knowledge. Tristram is meant to be the entraining rhythm and the reader the entrained rhythm. Iser explains it in the following way: Now, if communication between text and reader is to be successful, clearly the reader’s activity must also be controlled in some way by the text. The control cannot be as specific as in a face-toface situation; equally, it cannot be as determinate as a social code, which regulates social interaction. However, the guiding devices operative in the reading process have to initiate communication and to control it (1993, 32). Therefore, not only Tristram ought to initiate that communication and control it, but also to terminate it and signal the change of tempo to the reader. 4. Shifting gears Bispham explains that there are two fundamental aspects within entrainment: phase correction and period correction. The first, phase correction, points to our general capacity to synchronize action with an anticipated event and it is a control mechanism. In our model, this phase correction points to the capacity to read maintaining a specific rhythm, whether that rhythm is in search of adventures or knowledge. The second, period correction, on the other hand, refers to the ability to detect and switch between two dissimilar rhythms (the two different gaits that coexist in the text) (quoted in Walsh, 59). A conspicuous example of these two aspects of entrainment occurs within the narrative on chapter VI of the VII volume where they arrive to Boulogne and where Tristram speaks of changing horses and the ‘debtors and sinners’ in the inn where he and the horse have stopped begin asking what the reason for Tristram’s hurry is, whether it is high treason, murder, or debt. All this happens while Tristram seems to court the Irish host’s daughter, only to end up deciding to drop the courting and visit the Seminary of Humanities in town instead of pursuing any of all the previous enticing destinations. The reader is tricked into thinking that any of the adventurous options will be chosen by Tristram, but in fact, he decides to take a detour into a more scholarly destination, implicitly making the case of favouring a reading more in quest of knowledge. Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 22 What is more, in the following chapter of the same volume, right after the previous detour, we find this allusion to speed. WHEN the precipitancy of a man’s wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in––woe be to truth! and woe be to the vehicle and its tackling (let ’em be made of what stuff you will) upon which he breathes forth the disappointment of his soul (439)! Not only Tristram is indirectly suggesting that a gait of knowledge should have been decided, but also flags on the face of the reader that being too eager about the adventures will frustrate him. As pointed out by Ostovich in reference to the relationship between Tristram and reader, “This disputatious riding has for its object, not mere domination of the reader, but stimulation and provocation, the equal engagement of writer and reader in the creative journeying through the novel” (325). While Tristram sets the pace, it is the readers’ job to identify what the pace ought to be and period-correct themselves into the different rhythms. The ideal for both systems (writer and reader) in entrainment terms is that of ‘amused tolerance’, since, as Ostovich declares “the near impossibility of keeping one’s temper is what Tristram counts on.” (325). Entrainment into those two gaits, reading for knowledge and reading for adventures, thus, would be the proper attitude towards the different gaits to be ridden as Tristram’s hobbyhorse. Within a novel, either gait has its advantages and disadvantages, and readers need to modify their own attitude in order to maintain that consistent relationship between the two. Ostovich considers necessary for the relationship between reader and writer as well the physical devices of the blank pages, asterisks, pointing fingers, threats, games, and crosses and concludes, “all these are spurs and quirts to keep the hobbyhorsical reader trotting along.” (328). Within the phenomenological analysis, these ‘spurs and quirts’ are called places of indeterminacy or blanks, main topic of the following chapter of this dissertation. Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 23 CHAPTER 3: The Widow Wadman: A Blank Page on a Blank 1. Is there a blank in this sentence? The concept of ‘blank’ is drawn from the intrinsic indeterminacy that arises within a text when it is read, since several matters are not disclosed until we read on the text or perhaps are not disclosed at all. ‘Blanks’ are a similar concept to that of Ingarden’s ‘places of indeterminacy’; however, for Iser the blank “designates a vacancy in the overall system of the text” and not only within a segment as is the case for Ingarden (1994,182). Iser summarises that the “gaps function as a kind of pivot on which the whole text-reader relationship revolves” (169). Therefore, in order to understand how the interaction between text and reader works, blanks need to be analysed. 2. A Portrait of the widow Wadman as a planned blank Under the phenomenological analysis, the interaction between reader and text can be understood as a constitutive activity. As the person reads the text, (s)he constructs the experience inside his/her head. Iser explains it this way: “In order to spotlight the communication process, we shall confine our consideration to how the blanks trigger and simultaneously control the reader’s activity” (1993, 33-34). The issue at large with Tristram Shandy is that the reader is forced to ruminate about those blanks and their nature. By making readers aware of the process, which is meant to be unconsciously performed, it creates a sense of uneasiness continually breaking any possible suspension of disbelief. The reader is stopped right in the process of trying to impose a pattern on the text, (s)he is triggered towards something, controlled, and abruptly stopped. Tristram Shandy showcases the places of analysis since those blanks are made evident by the narrator’s comments. Furthermore, whenever the reader’s pattern creation is stopped by the narrator it signals how the communication between reader and text works and how it has been broken. The blank that will be studied in this section of the dissertation revolves around the character of the widow Wadman. In the thirty-sixth chapter of the sixth volume of Tristram Shandy (422) the male reader is stopped abruptly and encouraged to draw a portrait of the character of the widow Wadman and for that, he is given a full blank page (423). The reader has been promised to be told about Uncle Toby’s amours with the widow Wadman; however, Wadman has never been described in detail to the reader nor has she made an appearance in the story until that page, about two thirds into the novel. The widow Wadman is a blank in Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 24 Tristram Shandy because of her absence during the whole narrative and she designates a vacancy in the overall system of the text, affecting its plot, other characters, the narrator, and the reader. 3. Trigger warning One of the tools used by Tristram to trigger readers is to make promises to them. There are several events in Tristram Shandy that could fall under the umbrella of promises made by the narrator to the reader, to name but a few: a chapter on whiskers, a chapter on chambermaids and buttonholes, Tristram’s naming and birthing, and Slawkenbergius tale. One of those promises made towards the end of the fourth volume by Tristram is that of Uncle Toby’s amours, the “choicest morsel” of his work (303). In a way this event drives a type of reader eager for gossip, a reader in the lookout for adventures. It could be argued then, that one of the overall mechanisms to provoke the reader in Tristram Shandy is the (sub)plot of Toby’s love affairs epitomised in the character of the widow Wadman. The reader is triggered with Uncle Toby’s lack of relation with women by linking it early in the novel with the blow he received in the groin in the battle of Namur (59-60). The curiosity of the reader is provoked by mentioning the gossip that the only woman with character in the Shandy family was Aunt Dinah who got pregnant by the coachman while being married (58), but that all men in the Shandean family are of original character. Readers are also told in that page that the Shandies are no routinary family and Tristram repeats on several occasions during the text that he writes for the “inquisitive”, inciting readers to be nosier. Also, Uncle Toby and his remarkable modesty (seven times the word is mentioned within pages 59-60, and several other times in reference to Toby) are alluded to and how his modesty and his character was modelled by the blow he received in the groin at the battle of Namur. The connection between Toby’s purity and potency is made in the earliest stages of the novel. After the reader is triggered in such a way, Tristram opens the blank of Uncle Toby’s amours answering the question about how the blow on the groin could affect Toby’s lack of relationship with women in this manner: The story of that, Madam, is long and interesting;----but it would be running my history all upon heaps to give it you here.——’Tis for an episode hereafter; and every circumstance relating to it in its proper place, shall be faithfully laid before you :----’Till then, it is not in my power to give further light into this matter, or say more than what I have said already,----- That my uncle Toby was a gentleman of unparallel’d modesty […] (60) Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 25 Two things are promised in this excerpt: a detailed telling of the story of how Uncle Toby got his groin wound, and, implicitly and most importantly, how that affected his relationships with women, anticipating those relationships and increasing the reader’s curiosity about them. Furthermore, at the end of the chapter and of the whole volume 1, readers are explicitly told by Tristram about how he keeps them off balance and about how mystified they should be about Uncle Toby’s “perplexities” (69) when Tristram threatens to tear out the following page should readers guess what is to come next in the novel. The reader expects that those perplexities are another promise (or anticipation) of the story about what prevented Toby from being more receptive towards women, but Tristram relates in detail Toby’s confusions in the battle of Namur rather than those “perplexities” of Toby’s sentimental issues. Indeed, a strategy of digression, but the reader’s curiosity about Uncle Toby’s potency has been arisen. Thirty pages later, in the seventh chapter of the second volume, Toby himself tells readers about his love affair: To think, said my father, of a man living to your age, brother, and knowing so little about women!—I know nothing at all about them,––replied my uncle Toby; and I think, continued he, that the shock I received the year after the demolition of Dunkirk, in my affair with widow Wadman;—which shock you know I should not have received, but from my total ignorance of the sex,––-has given me just cause to say, That I neither know, nor do pretend to know, any thing about ’em, or their concerns either (90). It could be said that the blank starts to control the reader’s activity after this excerpt since the triggering of the curiosity towards Uncle Toby’s affairs materializes into the character of the widow Wadman. The promise of telling the reader about Uncle Toby’s affairs and the result of his groin wound might be the main one of many reasons why readers keep reading the text. Indeed, Tristram’s naming, birthing, and his father’s views about it, and “fifty other points left yet unravelled” are promised at the end of the second volume as well, also reasons for the reader to keep their temper and keep reading (136). Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 32 Universidad de Valladolid Rubén Illera López 33 BIBLIOGRAPHY Alsop, Derek, and Chris Walsh. 1999. “The Role of the Reader: Tristram Shandy”. In The Practice of Reading: Interpreting the Novel, edited by Derek Alsop and Chris Walsh, 28–50. London: Macmillan Education UK. Bluedorn, Allen C. 2002. The Human Organization of Time: Temporal Realities and Experience. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Business Books. Brennan, Susan E. 1996. “Lexical entrainment in spontaneous dialog.” Proceedings of ISSD 96 (1996): 41-44. Clayton, Martin. 2012. “What Is Entrainment? Definition and Applications in Musical Research”. Empirical Musicology Review 7 (1–2): 49–56. https://doi.org/10.18061/1811/52979. 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