Towards a Theory of Eccentricity

Abstract

This essay seeks to develop a literary theory of eccentricity taking as its point of departure everyday usages of the word eccentric, Helmuth Plessner’s notion of the eccentric positionality of human beings, and Thomas Nagel’s model of the interplay of subjective and objective viewpoints in human (self)positioning. Its key assumption is that eccentricity should be thought of as an attitude to life determined by a systematic indifference to “objective,” external viewpoints and values. While this is taken to characterize eccentricity as a personality trait, by extension the concept can then be made to also work for literary texts. These are also be seen to be indifferent to important external determinants, thus producing the “eccentric text.” These suggestions are tested and developed in an analysis of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1760-1767), which is being read as a novel featuring both eccentric characters and an eccentric literary technique.