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In this thesis I have tried to interpret Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy according to a genealogy of melancholy. Its content consists of four chapters; 'Chapter 1; In the Beginning was the Name', 'Chapter 2; Microcosm vs. Microcosm', 'Chapter 3; Time, Fool and Death', 'Chapter 4; Yorick's Dream'. First, the name Tristram Shandy is anatomized. Tristram is associated with the hero, who was born in 'tristesse', in the legend of Tristram and Iseult. As in Tristram's love of Iseult was death, and in his pleasure sadness as well, so is death in Tristram Shandy's life. That Tristram's father Walter failed in giving his son the name Trismegistus symbolically shows that Tristram's world is far from that harmonious and self-contented Hermetic one. Otherwise Tristram might have swallowed his tragedy after the way of Ouroboros which surrounds the Hermetic world. The family name 'Shandy' meant 'half-crazy' in the old usage. Thus the name Tristram Shandy gives birth to our melancholy hero who is destined to be half-crazy by his sad birth, which has a peculiar meaning among the heroes of eighteenth century English novels. The world in this work is limited to a space around the Shandy Hall, and each character lives in his own monadic world, having scarcely any real contact with one another. Walter is so deeply captured by his own notions that it is he that invites his own tragedy. Toby's fortification, the symbolic new science at that time, is also the symbol of retired life. The destruction of the bridge by Trim and Bridget and the invasion of Obadiah's cow were to revitalize Toby into real life, but all was in vain. Even Toby's love is destined to end in fruitlessness, whereas both Trim and Obadiah realize their fruitful love outside the Shandian world. Sterne's narrative simultaneously provides the objects being described and the meaning of his narrative. As a work of fiction comes to life for the first time when it is told, so does the life of Tristram, which is Sterne's 'opinion' of life. He wishes to swallow his real life into a work of fiction told by a fool named Tristram. By performing as a fool, Tristram gains freedom from time and space. But sometimes his digressive narrative is interrupted by Sterne's raw voice and sentiment, which might well be called the wedge of outer time driven into the inner one of his work, which is the shadow of Death hanging over Stern's real life. Here the inner life which should be fertile seems to be infertile, which forces Tristram-Sterne to run away from Death that is in his life to France. The fugitive life in France seems to give the work its fertile life. The song of the crazed Maria moves half-crazed Tristram. Here a monad has the hope of recognizing another not by reason but by sentiment. The story-telling by Sterne is a remedy for melancholy after the way of Robert Burton. By telling his story, Sterne tries to swallow his own tragedy which is comically expressed in the life of Tristram. As Yorick gave an end to the work by his pun of 'a Cock and a Bull', the whole story of Tristram's life appears to be Sterne's effort to get rid of his melancholy by being busy as long as his life continued.

メランコリーの系譜(II)

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