11Henry Fielding

• Fielding has been regarded as “Father of the English Novel”, for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel. • Of all the 18th novelists he was the first to set out to write specifically a “comic epic in prose,” the first to give the modern novel its structure and style. • Fielding adopted “the third-person narration”, in which the author becomes the “all-knowing God.” he “thinks the thought” of all his characters, so he is able to present not only their external behaviors but also the internal workings of their minds.
Writer’s Background (I)
• He later came to have his own Little Theatre. His plays were mostly comedies and farces filled with political and social satire, the butt being mainly the government and some government officials, particularly the Prime Minister Walpole. • As a playwright, he was applauded by the public but hated by the government. His theatrical career came to an end in 1737 when the political censorship of the Licensing Act went into effect. • In 1748, he was appointed Justice of the Peace for Westminster and then Middlesex, a position that brought him little income but much renown , for he served as an honest, upright and efficient magistrate.
Henry Fielding
(1707-1754)
His Life Story
Poverty: Illness
his parents’marriage his education his own illness his own marriage family’s illness his vocations
Comic Epic In Prose
• In planning his stories, he tries to retain the grand epical form of the classical works but at the same time keeps faithful to his realistic presentation of common as it is. • The ordinary and ridiculous life of the common people, from the middle-class to the under-world, is his major concern
Tom Jones
• Tom, the hero and a foundling • Mr. Allworthy, a wealthy gentry • Blifil, Mr. Allworthy’s nephew, hypocritical, wicked • Sophia, daughter of the well-off aquire Weatern
Novel Works
• The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742) • The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) (his masterpiece) • The History of Amelia (1751)
来自百度文库
Drama works
Three forms of plays: 1. witty comedies of manners or intrigues in the Restoration tradition 2. farces or ballad operas with political implications 3. burlesques and satires that bear heavily upon the status-quo of England The History of Jonathan Wild the Great (1743)
his new illness
Writer’s Background (I)--Poverty
• Born of an old aristocratic family, Henry Fielding was, for a period of time, at the prestigious Eton, where he cultivated a wide a genuine taste for the classics. • Later his father couldn't’t not afford his schooling in England and he was sent to Holland for higher education. • He had to work for a living early in life. He first tried his luck at play writing, and during a span of nine years (1729-37) he turned out 26 plays and became the most successful living playwright of the time.
Literary Ideas
• He was sympathetic toward the poor and the unfortunate • Protested strongly against social injustice and political corruption in his writings • The object of his novel was to present a faithful picture of life, “the just copies of human manners”, to teach man to know themselves, their proper spheres and appropriate manners
Writing style
• Fielding’s language is easy, unlaboured and familiar, but vivid and vigorous • Sentences are full of logic and rhythm • Structure carefully planned towards an inevitable ending • His works are full of dramatic dialogues and other theatrical devices such as suspense, coincidence and unexpectedness
Characteristics of Tom Jones
• Tom, a national hero, with manly virtues • Honest, wanting prudence and full of animal spirits • In a way , the young man stands for a wayfaring Everyman, who is expelled from the paradise and has to go through hard experience to gain a knowledge of himself and finally to approach perfectness.