The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman   is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. For its time, the novel is highly unconventional in its narrative technique - even though it also incorporates a vast number of references and allusions to more traditional works. The title itself is a play on a novelistic formula that would have been familiar to Sterne’s contemporary readers; instead of giving us the “life and adventures” of his hero, Sterne promises us his “life and opinions.” What sounds like a minor difference actually unfolds into a radically new kind of narrative. Tristram Shandy bears little resemblance to the orderly and structurally unified novels (of which Fielding’s Tom Jones was considered to be the model) that were popular in Sterne’s day. The questions Sterne’s novel raises about the nature of fiction and of reading have given Tristram Shandy a particular relevance for twentieth century writers, like Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce. (SparkNotes Editors, n.d.) Chapter VIII from Volume V begins with an apology from the implied author. He apologises for interrupting Trim’s speech and for not introducing “a chapter upon chamber-maids and button-holes” (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Volume V, Chapter VIII, pp. 299-300) and he explains that he made this choice because he was worried that the subjects would put in danger the morals of the world. The narrator then goes on with Trim’s speech about death, which is continued in Chapter IX. Trim’s speech seems to be held for anyone that will listen – and that is Jonathan, the coachman, Susannah and the scullion. From all of these low-class characters he is the most respected, therefore the only one able to hold such a discourse. He seems to be the most experienced from them and – as he shares h