Henry Fielding

British Literature Before 1800
The Novel Genre and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones
The Emergence of New Literary Modes
• A great poet named Matthew Arnold called the 18th century “an age of prose,” and he stated a great fact: great prose dominates the age. • Until the 1740s, poetry tended to set the standards of literature, but the growth of new kinds of prose took the initiative away from verse. • Novelists became better known than poets; no writers of the mid-18th century were more admired than Daniel Defoe or Henry Fielding. • Intellectual prose, criticism and essays also flourished during this time.
The First English Novel
These works of literature have each been claimed as the first novel in English:
Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, (written circa 1470, published 1485). John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (1678). Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688). Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719). Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740).
The Novel
• Name some conventions of the novel. EX: A convention of poetry would be that it is written in verse or that it often rhymes (has a rhyme scheme)
The Beginning of the Novel
• The modern novel came into its own in the 1740s. • Of course, prose fiction had existed since ancient times, and narrative traditions underscore the Bible and other religious texts. • In addition, John Bunyan’s allegories are other early prose works, BUT the novel as it exists today was born in the 1740s. • Previous attempts often blended history and fiction. Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is an excellent example of this. In the early 18th century, writers often mixed fact and fiction, and the master of this genre was Daniel Defoe.
Moving into the Mid-Eighteenth Century
• Shift from the “Novel of Incident” (epitomized by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe) to the “Novel of Character” (epitomized by Richardson’s Pamela) • Fielding’s Tom Jones demonstrates this literary shift best.
Henry Fielding
• Along with Samuel Richardson, Fielding is also credited by some as the originator of the novel. • The novel is a fictional prose work with a relatively long and often complex plot, usually divided into chapters, in which the story traditionally develops through the thoughts and actions of its characters. (not around the central storyline)
The Beginning of the Novel
• Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe became the most important of fictional novels which claimed to be true. • A middle-class writer, Defoe did not seek upper class readers. Instead, he aimed at shopkeepers, apprentices and servants, a readership hungry for indecent stories. • However, Defoe’s Crusoe goes beyond being merely a narrative. Crusoe is given an enforced unity of action by its focus on the problem of surviving on an uninhabited island. Crusoe presents so convincing a central character, set in so solid and detailed realized a world, that Defoe is credited with writing the first novel of incident. • The “Novel of Incident” is interested in what the protagonist will do next and on how the story will turn out.
Common Novel Conventions
• Magnitude and extended narrative permit
– A greater variety of characters – Greater complication of plot (or plots) – More sustained exploration of character and motives – Written in Prose
Henry Fielding
• In the English-speaking world, the term "picaresque" has referred more to a literary technique or model than to the precise genre that the Spanish call picaresco. • The English-language term can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero on the road.
Henry Fielding - Style
• In his works, Fielding criticized the social relations of Enห้องสมุดไป่ตู้land. He hated hypocrisy.
• Fielding’s work displayed the 18th century love of satire.
Henry Fielding
• Henry Fielding proved his mastery of the picaresque form in Joseph Andrews (1742), The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great (1743) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), but, as Fielding himself wrote, these novels were written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, not in imitation of the picaresque novel.
Henry Fielding
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling p240 • Tom Jones is a picaresque novel. • The picaresque novel (Spanish: "picaresca", from "pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") is a popular subgenre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. This style of novel originated in Spain and flourished in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries and continues to influence modern literature.