Henry Fielding S Novels And The Classical Tradition

In this study, author Nancy A. Mace rectifies the lack of scholarly attention given Henry Fielding's use of the classical tradition in his novels, periodical essays, and miscellaneous writings. Although scholars have extensively studied the affinities between Henry Fielding's novels and such modern genres as the romance, travel literature, and criminal biography, they have paid surprisingly little attention to his use of the classical tradition in developing both his narrative theory and practice.

'Epic into Novel' examines the work of Henry Fielding alongside other key eighteenth-century writers to examine how the conflicting influences of the classical tradition and the new literary marketplace were reconciled.

This study focuses on the co-evolution of the essay and the mode of literacy it enabled, and the interactive processes of reading, with a new approach to early modern textuality. It shows how the genre served to record, test and disseminate the skills required; and how the essay was adopted as a mechanism by various intellectual disciplines.

The works of Henry Fielding, though written nearly three hundred years ago, retain their sense of comedy and innovation in the face of tradition, and they easily engage the twenty-first-century student with many aspects of eighteenth-century life: travel, inns, masquerades, political and religious factions, the '45, prisons and the legal system, gender ideals and realities, social class. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," discusses the available editions of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, Shamela, Jonathan Wild, and Amelia; suggests useful critical and contextual works for teaching them; and recommends helpful audiovisual and electronic resources. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," demonstrate that many of the methods and models used for one novel--the romance tradition, Fielding's legal and journalistic writing, his techniques as a playwright, the ideas of Machiavelli--can be adapted to others.

Gale Researcher Guide for: Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and the English Novel is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

Argues that, although Fielding condemned romance, he shared virtually the same aesthetic assumptions as Mme. de Scudery and other heroic novelists. Calling this tradition of seventeenth-century epics in prose the Heliodoran novel, Lynch analyzes how romance conventions serve a clear aesthetic purpose.