Shandyism, Or, the Novel in Its Assy Shape: African Apuleius, The Golden Ass, and Prose Fiction

Shandyism, Or, the Novel in Its Assy Shape: African Apuleius, The Golden Ass, and Prose Fiction Margaret Anne Doody —But with an ass I can commune for ever.1 So says Tristram Shandy, taking us into his confidence as usual, after describing the ass he encountered in Lyons, at the gate of the Basse Cour of his inn. Sterne has just engaged in a riff that gives his game away, telling the curious and enlightened reader that his story is related to the tradition of the Ass-Novel, or Esel-Roman (as German scholars say). It is my contention that Sterne's novel is clearly related to the greater of the surviving Ass-Novels of antiquity, Apuleius's Asinus aureus, or Metamorphoses. My own views as to the long and complex history of the novel have been spelled out in The True Story of the Novel (1996), and there is of course no need to rehearse that argument here. Suffice it to say at present that I do not think that we best study eighteenth-century English fiction by remaining only within the geographical confines of England, or the temporal confines of the eighteenth century—even "the 1 Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Ian Watt (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), vol. 7, chap. 32, p. 399. References are to the original volume and chapter numbers, followed by the page number in this edition. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 12, Number 2-3, January-April 2000 436 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION long eighteenth century." (Unless, perhaps, one feels as I do, that "the long eighteenth century" extends from Aristotle to Bridget Jones 's Diary.) Each novel has deep and complex relations to a variety of other works, especially other works of fiction, and the relation to other novels is no mere matter of superficial allusion to be covered by a succinct footnote. Connections may create the new novel and its meaning, at least in part. I do not contend that the past is greater than the present, or that the later author is merely daunted by "anxiety of influence." Rather, the author is glad of the various other novelists, separate in time and space, who may be as it were taken into partnership in the new enterprise. Some of our ways of describing such connections and relationships in the past have become less than fully helpful over time. To refer to the "tradition of learned wit" has been helpful because it makes us aware of the play of reference in a novelist like Lucian or Petronius or Sterne; such a determining phrase may become negative because the very term, although daunting to the new young reader (who may shy away), can also be taken as an endorsement of the assumption that nothing very serious is happening in this fiction— that 'tis but a dry jest. At the same time, it can limit our view of the text's range of relationships, and their deeper significance. The Ass-Novel, the story of negative metamorphosis, provides a means of dealing with some ofthe most painful experiences of mortal nature, and eases us into a world not only of thought but of feeling—and of feeling in which pain is dominant. In all versions of the Ass-Novel, masculinity is in question, and the torments and dubieties of masculinity not only form a central subject but also put pressure upon and shape the form. Of course, Sterne's Tristram, unlike Apuleius's hero, appears clearly differentiated from the ass. The animal he encounters proves a source of diversion, even of conversation, though at first it is experienced as a blockage, creating an aporia, when Tristram is "stopped at the gate" by this uncertain animal who stands in the throughway: 'Twas by a poor ass who hadjust turned in with a couple of large panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosunary turnip tops and cabbage leaves; and stood dubious, with his two forefeet on the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to go in, or no. Now, 'tis an animal ... I cannot bear to strike------there is...