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HENRY FIELDING
1742
Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela is basically
about the importance of chastity as a way to
secure a prosperous marriage. In the novel
Pamela marries Mr B despite the sufferings he
caused.
Preservation of chastity is seen as a way to
achieve upward mobility, in other words to
obtain a higher social status, a situation which is
not very virtuous.
In 1742 Fielding published a parody of Pamela
in which he mocked Pamela’s excessive focus on
chastity through his protagonist Joseph Andrews
– the supposed brother of Pamela.
Parody in literature is an imitation of the style
and manner of a particular writer. Parody is
typically critical of a work’s perceived
weaknesses and seeks to ridicule them. (e.g.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s parody of the chivalric
romance in The Canterbury Tales)
Just as Pamela was pursued by Mr B, Joseph is
seduced by Lady Booby (Mr B’s recently
widowed aunt), which leads him to run away to
save his chastity.
In his «Preface» to the novel, Fielding refers to
his work as a «comic epic poem in prose».
Now, a comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose; differing from
comedy, as the serious epic from tragedy: its action being more
extended and comprehensive; containing a much larger circle of
incidents, and introducing a greater variety of characters. It differs
from the serious romance in its fable and action, in this; that as in the
one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and
ridiculous: it differs in its characters by introducing persons of inferior
rank, and consequently, of inferior manners, whereas the grave
romance sets the highest before us: lastly, in its sentiments and
diction; by preserving the ludicrous instead of the sublime. In the
diction, I think, burlesque itself may be sometimes admitted; of which
many instances will occur in this work, as in the description of the
battles, and some other places, not necessary to be pointed out to the
classical reader, for whose entertainment those parodies or burlesque
imitations are chiefly calculated. (from Fielding’s «Preface» to Joseph
Andrews)
Joseph Andrews has the length and comprehensiveness
of an epic, but does not have the seriousness of an epic
due to its comic tone.