“To Define Is to Distrust”: Intertextual Ambiguity in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and James Joyce’s Ulysses

Leona Toker*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

In the final episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Molly Bloom recollects how, in response to a priest’s question “where,” she returned an answer not about a part of her body but about a geographical location. This alludes to an episode of similar cross purposes of Widow Wadman and Uncle Toby in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. The interplay between the two texts is associated with the positive valorization of ambiguity on the part of the narrator of Tristram Shandy. In Sterne’s novel, legal and contractual definitions which seek to eliminate all ambiguity are, like Uncle Toby’s fortifications, a temptation for the forces of entropy: instead of shielding the characters from the intrusions of chance, they expose Tristram to serio-comic catastrophes. In Ulysses disambiguation is not a defensive but an offensive weapon (“Unsheathe your dagger definitions”; 238). In both cases, but particularly in Ulysses, the valorization of ambiguity in discourse is parallel to structural ambiguities that give rise to diametrically opposite readings. Ambiguity emerges not just as a matter of narrative rhetoric but as a feature of the creative impulse behind the story worlds, and as a challenge to the ethics of reading.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationStrategies of Ambiguity
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages291-305
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9781000987805
ISBN (Print)9781032286914
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker; individual chapters, the contributors.

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