Tristram Shandy’s comic modes: humour, satire, and learned wit

This essay examines the comic mechanisms in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, focusing on humour, satire, and learned wit. By tracing the evolution of humour from classical roots to its psychological and narrative roles in the eighteenth century, the study highlights how Sterne adapts traditional comic forms. Tristram Shandy is shown to synthesise various comic traditions into a rich, adaptive comic vision, adapting ancient humoral theories, Shaftesburian moral philosophy, Cervantic characterisation, and Scriblerian satire. The characters of Walter Shandy, Uncle Toby, Yorick and others exemplify different comic types—satirical and sentimental—whose fixations serve both as sources of humour and targets of critique. Sterne's humorous techniques are thus understood through an "amiable humorist" interpretation, serving as a form of Romantic "inverted sublime." The essay also discusses satirical interpretations of the work, notably Melvyn New’s anti-sentimentalist and anti-existential reading that stresses Sterne's fideistic scepticism. Ultimately, Sterne’s comic art is seen to represent a revision of literary and philosophical traditions into a complex form that balances critique with empathy. Humour in Tristram Shandy is not merely a rhetorical device but a worldview that embraces multiplicity, fostering a shared, redemptive laughter. Sterne’s work thus adapts historical comic forms into a narrative strategy that is at once critical, therapeutic, and profoundly humane.