Chapter I. A major representative of English enlightenment literature

Chapter II
2.1 Analysis of Henry Fielding’s novels
Today Fielding is universally acknowledged as a major figure in the development of the novel, although there is still niggling about whether he or Richardson is the “father” of the British novel. Ian Watt, for example, claims that Richardson’s development of “formal realism” is more significant than Fielding’s comic realism. Other critics, notably Martin Battestin, have demonstrated that Fielding’s broader, more humane moral vision, embodied in classical structure and expressed through a self-conscious narrator, is the germ from which the richness and variety of the British novel grows. This disagreement ultimately comes down to personal taste, and there will always be Richardson and Fielding partisans to keep the controversy alive. There is no argument, however, that of their type—the novel of comic realism—no fiction has yet surpassed Joseph Andrews or Tom Jones. Analysis and criticism of Henry Fielding’s fiction have traditionally centered on the moral values in the novels, the aesthetic structure in which they are placed, and the relationship between the two. In this view, Fielding as moralist takes precedence over Fielding as artist, since the aesthetic structure is determined by the moral. Each of the novels is judged by the extent to which it finds the appropriate form for its moral vision. The relative failure of Amelia, for example, may be Fielding’s lack of faith in his own moral vision. The happy ending, promulgated by the deus ex machina of the good magistrate, is hardly consistent with the dire effects of urban moral decay that have been at work upon the Booths throughout the novel. Fielding’s own moral development and changes in outlook also need to be considered in this view. The reader must examine the sources of Fielding’s moral vision in the latitudinarian sermons of the day, as well as the changes in his attitudes as he examined eighteenth century urban life in greater detail, and as he moved in literature from Joseph Andrews to Amelia, and in life from the theater to the bench of justice. As is clear from the preface to Joseph Andrews, however, Fielding was equally interested in the aesthetics of his fiction. Indeed, each of the novels, even from the first parody, Shamela, conveys not only a moral message but a literary experiment to find the strongest method for expressing that message to the largest reading public. This concern is evident in the basic plot structure, characterization, language, and role of the narrator. Each novel attempts to reach the widest audience possible with its moral thesis. Although each differs in the way in which Fielding attempts this, they all have in common the sense that the how of the story is as important as the what. The novels are experiments in the methods of moral education—for the reader as well as for the characters³. This concern for the best artistic way to teach a moral lesson was hardly new with Fielding. His classical education and interests, as well as the immediate human response gained from theater audiences during his playwriting days, surely led him to see that fiction must delight as well as instruct. Fielding’s novels are both exemplars of this goal (in their emphasis on incidents of plot and broad range of characterization) and serious discussions of the method by which to achieve it (primarily through structure and through narrative commentary).
The direct stimulation for Fielding’s career as novelist was the publication of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, a novel that disturbed Fielding both by its artistic ineptitude and by its moral vacuousness. Fielding was as concerned with the public reaction to Pamela as he was with its author’s methods. That the reading public could be so easily misled by Pamela’s morals disturbed Fielding deeply, and the success of that novel led him to ponder what better ways were available for reaching the public with his own moral thesis. His response to Pamela was both moral (he revealed the true state of Pamela/Shamela’s values) and aesthetic (he exposed the artificiality of “writing to the moment”).Sermons and homilies, while effective in church (and certainly sources of Fielding’s moral philosophy), were not the stuff of prose fiction; neither was the epistolary presentation of “virtue rewarded” of Pamela (nor the “objectively” amoral tone of Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, 1722). Fielding sought a literary method for combining moral vision and literary pleasure that would be appropriate to the rapidly urbanizing and secular society of the mid-eighteenth century. To find that method he ranged through direct parody, irony, satire, author-narrator intrusion, and moral exemplum. Even those works, such as Jonathan Wild and Amelia, which are not entirely successful, live because of the vitality of Fielding’s experimental methods. In Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, he found the way to reach his audience most effectively. Fielding’s informing moral values, embodied in the central characters of the novels ( Joseph Andrews, Parson Adams, Tom Jones, Squire Allworthy, Mr. Harrison) can be summarized, as Martin Battestin has ably done, as Charity, Prudence, and Providence. Fielding held an optimistic faith in the perfectibility of humanity and the potential for the betterment of society, based on the essential goodness of human nature. These three values must work together. In the novels, the hero’s worth is determined by the way in which he interacts with other people (charity), within the limits of social institutions designed to provide order (prudence). His reward is a life full of God’s provision (providence). God’s providence has created a world of abundance and plenitude; man’s prudence and charity can guarantee its survival and growth. Both Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones learn the proper combination of prudence and charity. They learn to use their innate inclination toward goodness within a social system that ensures order. To succeed, however, they must overcome obstacles provided by the characters who, through vanity and hypocrisy, distort God’s providence. Thus, Fielding’s moral vision, while optimistic, is hardly blind to the realities of the world. Jonathan Wild, with its basic rhetorical distinction between “good” and “great,” and Amelia, with its narrative structured around the ill effects of doing good, most strongly reflect Fielding’s doubts about the practicality of his beliefs. These ideas can be easily schematized, but the scheme belies the human complexity through which they are expressed in the novels. Tom Jones is no paragon of virtue, but he must learn, at great physical pain and spiritual risk, how to combine charity and prudence. Even Squire Allworthy, as Sheldon Sacks emphasized in Fiction and the Shape of Belief (1964), is a “fallible” paragon. These ideas do not come from a single source, but are derived from a combination of sources, rooted in Fielding’s classical education; the political, religious, and literary movements of his own time; and his own experience as dramatist, journalist, and magistrate.
Fielding’s familiarity with the classics, begun at Eton and continued at the University of Leyden, is revealed in many ways: through language (the use of epic simile and epic conventions in Joseph Andrews), through plot (the symmetry of design in Tom Jones), through theme (the importance of moderation in all the novels), and through structure (the relationship of Amelia to Vergil’s Aeneid). The preface to Joseph Andrews makes explicit how much Fielding saw in common between his own work and classical literature. His belief in the benevolent order of the world, especially illustrated by country living, such as at Squire Allworthy’s estate (Paradise Hall), is deeply rooted in the pastoral tradition of classical literature. These classical elements are combined with the beliefs of the latitudinarian homilists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who stressed the perfectibility of humankind in the world through good deeds (charity) and good heart (benevolence).
While Fielding’s thematic concerns may be rooted in classical and Christian thought, his literary technique has sources that are more complex, deriving from his education, his own experience in the theater, and the influence of Richardson’s Pamela. It is difficult to separate each of these sources, for the novels work them into unified and original statements. Indeed, Joseph Andrews, the novel most closely related to classical sources, is also deeply imbued with the sense of latitudinarian thought in its criticism of the clergy, and satire of Richardson in its plot and moral vision. Fielding’s concern for method as well as meaning is given its most formal discussion in the preface. The historical importance of this document results from both the seriousness with which it treats the formal qualities of the novel and the precision with which it defines the characteristics of the genre, the “comic epic-poem in prose.” The seriousness is established through the careful logic and organization of the argument and through the parallels drawn between the new genre and classical literature (the lost comic epic supposedly written by Homer) and modern painting (Michelangelo da Caravaggio and William Hogarth). Fielding differentiates the comic epic-poem in prose from contemporary romances such as Pamela. The new form is more extended and comprehensive in action, contains a much larger variety of incidents, and treats a greater variety of characters. Unlike the serious romance, the new form is less solemn in subject matter, treats characters of lower rank, and presents the ludicrous rather than the sublime. The comic, opposed to the burlesque, arises solely from the observation of nature, and has its source in the discovery of the “ridiculous” in human nature. The ridiculous always springs from the affectations of vanity and hypocrisy. Within the novel itself, the narrator will continue the discussion of literary issues in the introductory chapters to each of the first three of four books: “of writing lives in general,” “of divisions in authors,” and “in praise of biography.” These discussions, although sometimes more facetious than serious, do carry through the direction of the opening sentence of the novel: “Examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.” Additionally, this narrative commentary allows Fielding to assume the role of reader’s companion and guide that he develops more fully in Tom Jones.

While the preface takes its cue from classical tradition, it is misleading to assume that Joseph Andrews is merely an updating of classical technique and ideas. Even more than Shamela, this novel brings together Fielding’s dissatisfaction with Richardson’s moral thesis and his support of latitudinarian attitudes toward benevolence and charity. Here, too, Fielding begins his definition of the “good” man in modern Christian terms. Joseph redefines the place of chastity and honor in male sexuality; Parson Adams exemplifies the benevolence all people should display; Mrs. Towwowse, Trulliber, and Peter Pounce, among others, illustrate the vanity and hypocrisy of the world. The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews is a comedian epic that follows the private account of the affable young man Joseph and his faithful accomplice the Parson Adams. Through a collection of misadventures, Fielding constructs an enjoyable story that embodies all of the principles of the Augustan Age. Joseph Andrews is created to be a very easy character; he can be described as a deeply virtuous and faithful younger man. The Parson Adams is a greater developed and complex character. He is a religious figure with a range of vices, an affable and scatter-brained older man and wise and philisophical soul.

Jonathan Wild

In Jonathan Wild, Fielding seems to have abandoned temporarily the progression from the moral statement of parody and sermon to the aesthetic statement of literary example. Jonathan Wild was first published in the year immediately following Joseph Andrews (revised in 1754), and there is evidence to indicate that the work was actually written before Joseph Andrews⁴. This is a reasonable assumption, since Jonathan Wild is more didactic in its method and more negative in its moral vision. It looks back toward Shamela rather than ahead to Tom Jones. Jonathan Wild is less a novel, even as Fielding discusses the form in the preface to Joseph Andrews, than a polemic. Critic Northrop Frye’s term, “anatomy,” may be the most appropriate label for the work. Like other anatomies—Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759)—it emphasizes ideas over narrative. It is more moral fable than novel, and more fiction than historical biography, altering history to fit the moral vision.
More important, it was Fielding’s experiment in moving the moral lesson of the tale away from the narrative (with its emphasis on incident and character) and into the rhetoric of the narrator (with its emphasis on language). Fielding attempted to use language as the primary carrier of his moral thesis. Although this experiment failed— manipulation of language, alone, would not do—it gave him the confidence to develop the role of the narrative voice in its proper perspective in Tom Jones.