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Animal Spirits
A homunculus is a miniature yet fully formed person, believed in the early eighteenth century to be the form out of which a fetus grows into a child.
Homunculus Quotes in Tristram Shandy
The Tristram Shandy quotes below are all either spoken by Homunculus or refer to Homunculus. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 1: Chapters 1-5
Quotes
Pray my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?—Good G–! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,—Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?—Nothing.
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Homunculus Term Timeline in Tristram Shandy
The timeline below shows where the term Homunculus appears in Tristram Shandy. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1: Chapters 1-5
Chapter 2. Tristram continues, explaining how the homunculus formed at his conception lacked the proper animal spirits to guide its development, as his...
(full context)
Book 1: Chapters 16-20
...the doctors and wonders why they do not go a step further and baptize all homunculi even before conception, if that can be done without harm to the father.
(full context)
