Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding)

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 h

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s quoted by Battestin, 1989, 9). Fielding's literary enactment of Joseph's rustic quest has several parallels to Cervantes' Don Ouixote, including the famed Night Adventure scenes. Fielding paid attention to and imitated such famed scenes as Quixote's first adventure after being knighted where he is given a rare chance to right an actual wrong, Cervantes, ridiculing the "true historian" in rendering the Battle of Biscayan, and his eloquent defense of poetry (Goldberg 344). Fielding's Night Adventure scenes appear to have as its prototype the incident of Maritornes as depicted by Cervantes in Don Ouixote (Goldberg 344). Maritornes described as an Austrian wench is a chambermaid in a castle which Don Quixote and Sancho visit. Circumstance dictates that upon the night of their arrival she is to rendezvous with the Carrier. Cervantes elaborates upon Maritornes' nature by saying that she was so good-natured that whenever she passed her word, even if her promise had been made "in the midst of a Wood and without any Witness", she still, would make it good (Cervantes in Goldberg 353). Cervantes presents Maritornes' attempt to meet her lover at night as a hilarious bedroom farce. Needing to sneak past the wounded Knight, Maritornes
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Approximate Word count = 1850
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)