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Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding)

Revisiting the Night Adventure Scenes in Joseph Andrews

In Joseph Andrews Mark Spilka has suggested that Henry Fielding uses the night adventure scenes near the novel's end to further undermine the hypocritical prudery displayed in Samuel Richardson's Pamela while simultaneously advancing the seriousness of his own satire. According to the dictums of eighteenth century literature, the burlesque was attached to "absurdity" while comedy was to be seen as a "just imitation of nature" (Nokes 17). Often acknowledged as the first realist novel within the British tradition, Joseph Andrews offers a high octane mixing of literary genres in which its readers are to delight but it never completely abandons the high seriousness of its satiric intent. As an innovator Fielding sprinkles Joseph Andrews with genres as diverse as the parable, literary criticism, and moral fable, intentionally creating a hybrid which he hopes will alter the direction of literary history (Rhodes in Simpson 101). Stringing together an episodic series of absurd and fanciful twists and turns within an undoubtedly overstretched plot, Fielding exceeds the traditions of the picaresque since he follows a certain unity of character and scene development. Yet the night adventure scenes crystallize his shared intent to entertain and nudge up against the hypocrisy of public opinion, maybe even toppling it (Spilka in Goldberg 404).

Despite being bestowed with the illustrious title of father of the novel, Fielding has been ridiculed and dismissed by several major critics. Samuel Johnson who despised Fielding's fiction for being too "low" (Alter 7) quipped that a comparison between Samuel Richardson, author of Pamela which Fielding so heartily satirizes in Joseph Andrews, and Henry Fielding is "as between a man who knew how a watch was made and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial plate" (Johnson as quoted by Nokes 9). Yet Johnson's comment seems tainte...

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Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding). (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:03, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690459.html