HENRY FIELDING

(1707–1754)
 “A new species of writing”
• Playwright, journalist, barrister, judge,
novelist
• A founder of the English novel
• Fielding and Richardson as the classic English
novel, “a new species of writing” (Richardson)
or “a new kind of prose fiction” (Johnson)
• Fielding and Richardson as rivals: Fielding’s
gentlemanly career vs. Richardson’s bourgeois
career, Fielding’s propensity for comedy,
satire, and parody vs. Richardson’s liking for
sentimentality and instruction
Education and work
• Family related to a branch of the
Habsburgs
• Educated at Eton and University of
Leiden, Holland (classical studies)
• Worked as a playwright until 1737;
editor and journalist for Champion; or,
British Mercury, The True Patriot and
the History of Our Own Times, The
Jacobite’s Journal, The Covent Garden
Journal; barrister and judge; novelist →
impact on his writing
Drama: genres
• Comic and satirical plays
• Combined
comedy of humours – end of 16th, early 17th century; actions of characters ruled by a
particular passion, trait, disposition, or humour (see the medieval and Renaissance
theory of humours)
comedy of manners – the behaviour of men and women living under specific social
codes, usually those of the middle and upper classes (see English Restoration comedy)
farce – “low” comedy provoking basic mirth by employing exaggerated physical action,
character, and situation; absurd situations and improbable events; surprises
(unexpected appearances/disclosures); associated with burlesque
burlesque – derisive imitation of a literary/musical work, associated with stage
entertainment but not confined to drama (see burlesque poetry)
ballad opera – early form of musical invented by John Gay which combines dialogue
and music
satirical political comedy – exposing and ridiculing the follies, vices, and shortcomings
of society/politics; often akin to burlesque, farce, and comedy of manners
Drama: works
• Love in Several Masques (1728) – love, virtue, morality;
eclipsed by Colley Cibber’s The Provok’d Husband and
John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera
• The Temple Beau (1730) – hypocrisy
• The Author’s Farce and the Pleasures of the Town (1730)
– world of booksellers, writers, publishers, playwrights,
theatre; first successful play
• Rape upon Rape; or, the Justice Caught in his own Trap
(1730) – injustices of the legal system
• Tom Thumb: A Tragedy (1730) – tragedy turns to farce;
based on a story from English folklore
• Don Quixote in England (1734) – class inequality and
parasitical life of aristocracy
End of theatrical career and impact on
prose
• 1737: Pasquin and The Historical Register,
For the Year 1736 provoked Sir Robert
Walpole’s government → the Licensing Act
of 1737 → censorship + London
performances restricted to two approved
theatres → end of Fielding’s theatrical career
• Influence on his prose: sense of dialogue,
patterning of incident, well-established
denouement, comic and satirical edge,
Fielding as puppet master and characters as
puppets
Novels: parodies
• Shamela (1741) – anon. epistolary parody of
Pamela, written to expose “the many notorious
Falsehoods and Misrepresentations” in
Richardson’s novel; attack on hypocritical
morality, sentimentality, narrative technique,
and Pamela’s language; sham virtue/“Vartue”
• Joseph Andrews (1742) – another anon. parody
of Pamela, focusing on Pamela’s brother; third-
person narrative; Preface defines the novel as “a
comic epic poem in prose” → parodic imitation
of an epic (cf. Byron’s Don Juan); virtue that
does not seek reward
 Novels: The Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the
Great (1743)
• Stories of low-life characters were in vogue
• Satirical exposure of hypocrisy through
ridicule
• Great man vs. good man → satirical portrait
of the English society and its “great men”
• Jonathan Wild – leader of thieves and thief-
taker (≈ fictional Moll Flanders)
• One of the first antiheroes of English
literature
Novels: The History of Tom Jones, a
Foundling (1749)
• Masterpiece
• Genre combines the epic, comic, picaresque, and satirical, with
elements of Bildungsroman. Also a kind of social novel (distinct
genre in mid-19th century) that dramatizes social problems
through a character.
• Comic redefinition of the epic
• Epic and picaresque journey towards self-realization with
picaro as the main character
• Imposing omniscient narrator as puppet master
• Humankind described, praised, and criticized as a species
• Country manners vs. city manners
• Wide gallery of characters → vivid picture of 18th-century
England
 Novels: Amelia (1751)
• Sombre
• Anticipation of the Victorian domestic novel (represents
middle-class life and produces it as a cultural ideal that binds
middle-class respectability to notions about proper masculinity
(productivity and professionalism) and femininity (exemplary
and well-regulated domesticity)
• Idea: “to promote the cause of virtue, and to expose some of
the most glaring evils, as well public as private, which at present
infest the country”
• Focus on the sufferings of a moral heroine
• Urban temptations vs. rural pleasures and safety
• Diminished role of the narrator
• Middle-class family life in a wider social setting → an early social
novel
Legacy
• Model for later social and comic
writers
• Inspiration for Charles Dickens
and William Makepeace
Thackeray
• The first to develop a theory of
the novel as a distinct genre
• Established realism