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Moraru Teodora-BiancaIIIrd year, German-English gr. I.The Psychological Origins and the Effects of the Hobbyhorse in Laurence Sternes Tristram shandyDefying Dr. Samuel Johnsons statement that Nothing odd will do tenacious, Laurence Sternes eccentric masterpiece, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, an extended act of hypothesis upon story-telling based on John Lockes philosophical theory of the connective of ideas, became a notable forerunner of the modern English novel, celebrating the infinite possibilities of the contrivance of fiction.Undoubtedly, one of the most crucial philosophical literary works of the eighteenth century was John Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which had a tremendous influence on the writers of his time and also on the universal approach to terms such as the nature of thought and man consciousness. In his Essay, Locke stated important theories about the eon of ideas and their interrelation, which profoundly influenced Ster ne and became the basis of much of the seemingly arbitrary structure of his suspicious metanovel, Tristram Shandy.Sterne adopted in particular ii of Lockes purposes. First, the association of ideas, by which certain ideas, either by accident or because they retain near particular significance, become so closely linked in a mans mind that he cannot think of every of them without inevitably c totallying up all the others as well, in the analogous order in which he had prieviously experienced them. Secondly, the train of ideas, which is a much general concept of the mind as being constantly in motion, with the result that one idea automatically suggests another in some way similar to it, which in turn leads on to something else. Sterne uses this latter concept as an explanation for much of the seemingly eccentric behaviour of his characters and as a basis for many of the dazzling transitions of time and space which retreat place in the novel.John Locke considered the ideas as b eing the funda psychological construct blocks of all man thought, also stating the fact that all our knowledge and ideas bob up from experience and that there are no innate ideas. He viewed the human mind as a tabula rasa, a white paper, void of all characters, without any Ideas. This empty room of the mind is gradually furnished with ideas of two sorts first we obtain ideas of things we suppose to exist outside us in the physical world by sensation, and secondly we come to ideas of our own mental operations by reflection.