Week 9: Sensation, Sensibility, and Senses

In the Starr article for this week, art and mental images supposedly derive their power from a mix of sensory images, allowing them to blend/work together, as "texture or temperature contribute fundamentally to taste." (286).  Toward the end of the article, Starr seems to come to the conclusion that the mental image of motion is this mix of other sensory images.  Starr also reminds us that a mental image often activates, though somewhat less intensely, the same brain regions as the actual sensations of such stimuli.

I haven't finished the book, Memoirs of a Women of Pleasure, yet, but the descriptions of Francis Hill's excitement while watching the Madam and, later, Polly engaging in sex reminded me of these two ideas.  That is, she's not experiencing the physical pleasure of sex, only watching.  She also seems to be imagining Pheobe's fingers the first time, while she experiences them the second.  Hill gets a physical pleasure out of watching the Madam. In fact, she feels the need to masturbate to this sight, "following mechanically...Pheobe's manual operation on it" (25).  Her mental image is tactile, but she also has to imagine what her hand has to do (proprioception) to create that feeling she remembers from Pheobe's hand.  When she watches, with Pheobe, Polly and her man, she again becomes excited, leading Pheobe to make her "stand with [her] back towards the door" while "[Pheobe's] busy fingers fell to visit" (32).

Pheobe waits until after this voyeurism to ask Hill "if [she] was still afraid of him [man]?" (33).  At this point, Hill is excited and can barely wait to meet here proposed taker of virginity.  Perhaps this has something to do with the article's note that "imagined odors...may interfere with or alter our perception of actually present tastes" (285).  While the senses are different, it seems the expectation of Hill influenced her perception, then of her sexual encounter with the young man who took her away from the bawdy-house.  She refuses to cry out, even though it hurts, and she convinces herself for the second round that it doesn't hurt as much as it is pleasurable.  Perhaps that's true, but given the description of his size, her smallness, and the pain of losing your virginity in general, I rather doubt it.  The question is, then, to what degree can expectations of an event/situation (associated with a mental image of that event) alter our perceptions of those events when they actually occur?  To what extent is Hill able to fool herself, essentially?  (As she does in the beginning when she refuses to "open [her] eyes to Mrs. Brown's designs" even after being paraded in front of an old man obviously appraising her sexual/physical worth. (16)).

Week 8: Sleep and Consciousness

Since I'm doing my presentation this week, I'm not going in to great depth here.  The essence of what I wish to explore is whether the novel supports or refutes Darwin's claim that sleepwalking is a kind of reverie, and not actually sleeping.

Week 7: Memory

Again, I'm just really overwhelmed by this novel, Tristram Shandy.  As I attempted to think about this novel in terms of memory, I kept coming back to the idea that the narrator sounds as if he's offering the reader a sort of stream of consciousness.  Even though we talked of the different styles of narrating, it still feels like more of a stream than any real change.  As the narrator thinks, the way his consciousness is aware of past, present, people, reader, self, environment, etc. changes.  Part of what the narrator says is his reasoning for putting all this detail down is that he wishes to chronical his life. The reader just happens to get this life in awkward excerpts from past conversations, future stories of past events, and impressions/thoughts of the writer currently.  This is confusing, but makes a little more sense in light of the Carruthers reading we did.  


"process of recollection whose goals is to invent and compose in the present - not to reproduce a record of past events"
"good memory...is the ability to move [material] about instantly, directly, and securely"

These two quotes made me think of Shandy's stated goal of setting down his life as perhaps a construction of his life as he experiences/sees it now.  That is, his life story is being composed in the present, which might be why it is harder to follow in a linear chain.  Also, the second quote might add to that too.  Maybe Shandy is trying to show the reader how good his memory is by jumping around to a lot of different things.  He hasn't just 'memorized' his life in a superficial way, but actually has learned his life.  

Lastly, "a memory image...can also cause us to remember 'what is not present'" (Aristotle, as quoted in Carruthers).  This made me think about how Shandy might continually be distracted.  If pictures aren't the only things which can distract, but any visual image can do so as well, then the actual words on the page, or whatever may be going on around the writer may distract him or make him think of something else he want's to be sure to get down for the reader.  That doesn't make it any less confusing, but perhaps more understandable?  

Week 6: Distraction

In reading Tristram Shandy, I wondered how last week's and this week's topics might interact.  That is, the characters in Tristram Shandy seem to be distracted from the conversations they have or the events going on around them because of their Hobby-Horses, as Sterne calls their obsessions.  Is obsession a form of distraction?  But if one is easily distracted, how can one become obsessed in the first place?

"we can attend to but one thing at a time" (Edgeworth).  I felt like Sterne should keep that in mind when writing Tristram Shandy.  Part of what makes this novel so difficult is that it keeps jumping from one situation to others.  The narrator will introduce a conversation, like that of Walter and Toby Shandy on the night of Tristram's birth, but then interrupt said conversation to explain other details, coming back to the situation/conversation a few chapters later.  I felt as though I had to keep flipping back and forth to keep up with what was currently happening, which is annoying for a book that claims to want to keep the timeline in order.  

Yet, this is chronological in a way.  The feeling I get from this is when you let your mind wander from some intended point - almost like a stream of consciousness.  Even though the narrator says he's constructing this intentionally for the reader to engage with the story of his life, the constant interruptions make it hard for the reader to stay attentive, which makes me wonder how carefully he's attending to what his stated goals actually are.  Unless, can we tell when our distractions are distracting for someone else?  Are the distractions distracting, or just the effects of the distractions?  

I guess, overall, I'm mostly just confused by this novel right now.