Henry Fielding

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Henry Fielding
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contents
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1. Early life

• Henry Fielding (1707 1754) was born at Sharpham
  Park, the house of his maternal grandfather in
  Somerset. His mother died when he was eleven, and
  when his father remarried Henry was sent to Eton.
  There he was happy, enjoying his studies. At 19
  he attempted to elope with a beautiful heiress,
  but failed. He settled in London, determined to
  earn his living as a dramatist.

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Henry Fielding
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Somerset
Eton
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2. Works

• 1728 Love in Several Masques
• In the follow years before 1737
• Tom Thumb
• Pasquin
• The Licensing Act of 1737
• 1739 40
• The Champion

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• 1740 Pamela
• 1741 An apology for the life of Mrs Shamela
  Andrews
• 1742The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his
  Friend, Mr Abraham Adams
• 1743 Miscellanies
• A Journey from this World to the
• The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild the Great.

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• 1749 The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
• 1751 Amelia
• 1753 Proposal for making effective provision for
  the Poor
• 1755The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, published
  posthumously

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3. Important position in English Literature

• Fielding is generally agreed to be an innovating
  master of the highest originality. He himself
  believed he was the founder of a new province of
  writing. Of all the eighteenth-century novelists
  he was the first to set out, both in theory and
  practice, to write specifically comic epics in
  prose, the first to give the modern novel its
  structure and style.

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• Before him, the relating of story in a novel was
  either in the epistolary form, as in Richardson's
  Pamela, or the picaresque form through the mouth
  of the principal character, as in Swift's
  Gulliver's Travels, but Fielding adopted the
  third-person narration, in which the author
  becomes the all-knowing God. Thus he can think
  the thought of all his characters, and he is able
  to present not only their external behaviors but
  also the activities of their inner minds.

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• In planning his stories, he tries to retain the
  grand epical form of the classical works but at
  the same time keeps faithful to his realistic
  presentation of common life as it is. His comic
  epics in prose are in effect the first modern
  novels in the history of English literature,
  leading straight to the works of Dickens and
  Thackeray.

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4. Features of his works

• Fielding weaves moral teaching into his writings.
  As an educated man, he firmly believed in the
  educational function of literature. He shared the
  contemporary view of the English enlighteners
  that the purpose of the novel was not just to
  amuse, but to instruct. The object of his novel
  was to present a faithful picture of life, the
  just copies of human manners, with sound
  teaching woven into their texture, to teach men
  to know themselves, their proper spheres and
  appropriate manners.

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• Fielding's language is simple and familiar, but
  extremely vivid and vigorous. His sentences are
  always distinguished by logic and rhythm, and his
  structure carefully planned towards an inevitable
  ending. His works are also noted for lively,
  dramatic dialogues and other theatrical devices
  such as suspense and coincidence.

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5. Tom Jones

• (1)The story
• (2) The purpose of writing this novel

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(1).The story
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(2). The purpose of writing this novel

• His purpose of writing this novel is to make
  provision no other than human nature, that is,
  to recommend goodness and innocence, and
  criticize greed, cruelty, selfishness, and
  hypocrisy. In Tom Jones, the author expresses his
  sympathy for the poor and unfortunate and
  protests strongly against social injustice and
  political corruption in his society. He
  recommends goodness and innocence embodied in Tom
  Jones and emphasizes the educational function of
  reason (ration) on Tom which makes Tom throw off
  his follies of youth and become mature by
  learning from life experience. He makes merciless
  attack on greed, cruelty, hypocrisy and
  self-centeredness of the upper class exemplified
  and represented by Master Blifil.

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