Tristram Shandy

Dedication. Addressing the “Right Honorable” Mr. Pitt, Tristram opens his first volume with a note explaining his rural living situation and poor health. He describes his efforts to keep his spirits up through wit and laughter, which is also the goal of his book. He hopes Mr. Pitt will make use of the book to that end.

Chapter 1. Tristram wishes his parents had been more thoughtful in creating him and criticizes them for not being more attentive. He believes that the circumstances of his gestation affected his temperament and personality, particularly in form of his humors and animal spirits, and he muses on how he could have been different. Indeed, Tristram believes that these parts of his personality exert a greater influence upon his life than his conscious thinking. At the moment of Tristram’s conception, Tristram’s mother interrupts Tristram’s father to ask if he wound up their clock.

Chapter 2. Tristram continues, explaining how the homunculus formed at his conception lacked the proper animal spirits to guide its development, as his mother’s interjection dispersed them. Tristram then argues that the homunculus too has rights, and he bemoans what happened to his own homunculus, which reached birth in a weakened state without the proper animal spirits to help it grow.

Chapter 3. Tristram explains how he learned of the story of his conception, which was told to him by his uncle Toby, who had listened to Tristram’s father’s complaints. Tristram’s father shared Tristram’s concerns that his ill-fated conception would produce an abnormal child, a fear that Tristram’s mother didn’t share.

Chapter 4. Tristram criticizes readers who demand full access to a book and are unable to enjoy themselves without being let in on its secrets. He justifies the detail with which he has recounted the story of his conception as a gesture to these readers. Referencing Horace and Montaigne, Tristram pledges to continue narrating his life precisely. He then suggests that incurious readers skip the rest of the chapter. Tristram dates his conception to the first Sunday night or Monday morning of March 1718. He is able to place his conception so exactly because Tristram’s father, a former merchant living in retirement on their country estate, had a regular habit of winding up the clock on the first Sunday night of every month. The month of Tristram’s birth can be confirmed by his father’s illness earlier in the year and travels later in the spring.

Chapter 5. Tristram then dates his birth to November 5, 1718. He bemoans being born on Earth and wishes instead to have been born on another planet, though not one of the colder ones. Harshly criticizing earth and human life, Tristram explains that his life has been a series of misfortunes and accidents, if not any particularly great disasters.