Tristram Shandy and Jonathan Swift

How is our attention maintained by movement and misfortune?

My Tristram's misfortunes came nine months before ever he came into the world.
-Laurence Sterne Pg. 11 (Chp. 3)

Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts and Blood,
Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud,
Dead Cats and Turnep- Tops come tumbling down the
Flood.
-Jonathan Swift, A Description of a City Shower

It both pieces, A Description of a City Shower and Tristram Shandy, the author continuously moves us from one misfortune/horror to another. Swift not only uses strong verbs (ie. drench'd, tumbling), but also words that are the noun (ie. sweepings) or adjective (drown'd) forms of verbs to sustain a sense of movement throughout the piece. This movement is not random, it takes us from one visceral image to another, the butcher stalls, the guts and blood. Somehow, these two things together function very well to sustain our attention, or at least mine. I see a similar pattern in Tristram Shandy, while perhaps not as horrifying (yet). In this story, we are continuously transported forward and backward in time. The story's progress is not chronological, but rather motivated by movement from one misfortunes to another. This concept draws to mind a neuroscience concept. The tectal system in the brain functions to draw our attention to movements of visual stimuli, there are structures called the superior colliculus mediate this function. Perhaps the method of attention focusing used by these authors draws it's ability from the connection between movement and attention present in other sensory systems.