Tristram Shandy/Redundancy

Ong’s oral characteristic of redundancy and copiousness: In order for an oral story to keep the focus of attention on itself, and because oral utterances vanish as soon as they are uttered, it is necessary to repeat what has already been said, to keep both hearer and speaker on track. Sterne takes this requirement of orality and turns it on its head—he has written Tristram to read as thought spoken orally, but offers no aid for the reader to keep up. Instead of going over what has possibly been missed or misunderstood by the reader, Sterne continues on his tangents and gives no regard to the intended confusion of the audience. Ong says, “sparsely linear or analytic thought and speech are artificial creations, structured by the technology of writing” (Ong, 40). Perhaps Sterne is mocking the developing literate tradition— his writing is neither linear nor analytic, but convoluted and chaotic.