THE COMIC - EPIC NOVEL Þ HENRY FIELDING

HENRY FIELDING (

Fielding was born into an aristocratic family in 1707. He was educated fists at Eton and then in Holland. Fielding began his career as a playwright and then he decided to resume his legal studies and, in1740, he was called to Bar. In the meantime, he had also begun writing novels. He was appointed Justice of Peace and a London magistrate. This job brought him into contact with the poor and criminal classes and, driven by a great concern for them, he did his best to improve prison conditions and reform judicial proceeding.

Novels

An apology for the life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews a short anonymous parody of Richardson's Pamela.

The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr Abraham Adams written in imitation of Cervantes Don Quixote, in which, revising the parody begun in the previous work, fielding at first imagined that Pamela's good and modest brother, Joseph, had to defend his virtue against the attacks of his mistress, Lady Booby. Is a real novel in which Joseph, after many adventures, is finally able to return home and marry a beautiful and virtuous girl..

The history of Tom Jones, a foundling the story of a foundling who, after many vicissitude, manages to discover his real origin and marry the woman he loves.

The comic - epic novel

Disgusted by the sham morality of Pamela as well as his hypocrisy and ambiguity, he wrote Shamela, the satirical purpose of which was made explicit by the long title of the work. Written in the epistolary form this short comic narrative as not a true novel, however, but simply the parody of someone else's work.

Writing Joseph Andrews Fielding seems to have realized a new literary genre and he decided to approach it methodically by first defining what he really wanted to write and how. Having decided to describe comic situations within an epic structure, Fielding looked for a model and found it in Servantes Don Quixote, form which in Joseph Andrews he borrowed the structure of the journey, "heroic" adventures, much humour, and the epic tone applied to trivial events.

Features

Although containing elements found in picaresque novel, Joseph Andrews remains a comic epic poem in prose, a definition which could also be applied to others Fielding's works, particularly Tom Jones:

The plot is no longer based on a simple sequence of events or on a single story, but presents a well - knit combination of episodes in an organic unit,

No more indoor setting but outdoors (streets, highways, various itineraries),

There is a wide range of characters including middle - class non- conformists as well as members of the lower classes since they afforded the greatest diversity and the greatest potential for the truly comic. His character are static, they remain the same from beginning to end,

All the novel offer a realistic and genuine picture of the 18^th century English life,

There is no idea of Puritan punishment. Sexual instinct is frankly presented and not branded as immoral or suppressed, but simply controlled and direct to the good. There is nonetheless a moral message strictly connected with Fielding's belief in men's natural inclination towards goodness,

There are neither melodramatic episodes nor heartrending scenes of falsely prudish attitudes. Love is a strong, sound feeling, which is openly revealed without any false reluctance.

TOM JONES

This work is dramatic in structure and divided into three parts:

Twenty - one where the young Tom, a good -natured and generous foundling is brought up as a soon by Mr. Allworthy, who loves him more that his legitimate nephew Blifil. Tom falls in love with Sophia Western, she loves him against the will of his father, who does not want a foundling in his family. But Blifil, wishing to take revenge on his cousin, s to replace Tom in the girl's heart and successfully intrigues to have Tom turned out of the house.

Ten days and is set on the road to London. While Tom leaves Allworthy's house and sets out on his travels, Sophia, determined to escape from the marriage to Blifil insisted on by her father, run away from home with the help of her maid Honour, and also makes for London, where she intents to place herself under the protection of a relative, Lady Bellaston. The two young people follow the same routes and even stop at the same inns without ever meeting. They are both confronted with many adventures, some of which see Tom involved in amorous feat.

Twenty - three days and is set in London where the two lovers finally meet. After many tribulations, including duels and love affairs, Tom is finally discovered to be the son of Allworthy's sister and, once Blifil machinations have been exposed, he can at last become reconciled with his uncle and marry Sophia.

The foundling

Mr. Allworthy had been absent for three months and when he returns home is very late in the night and after a short supper with his sister he retired to his room. Here, with a great surprise, on his bed he found an infant in a sweet and profound sleep. He stood some time lost in astonishment at this sight. Mr. Allworthy saw the good part of the situation and, perfectly quiet, he rang the bell to call an elderly woman - servant. Called at an extraordinary hour in the night the woman gave her master sufficient time to dress himself and, out of respect to him and regard to decency, she spent some time at the looking glass. In the meantime Mr. Allworthy was so eager in contemplating the child that he forgot he was in his night shirt and when the woman entered the room and saw her master's bare legs was terribly shocked by his appearance (but not by the possible reason why he was undressed). In order to put and end to her terror, he immediately clothed himself. She vowed that in 52 years of life her pure eyes had never beheld a men without his cloths. When she learnt of the baby she cried out with great horror asking what was to be done. Her master answered that she must take care of the baby till the next morning, when he would give orders to provide it a nurse.

There is obtrusive narrator and there is the use of contrast above all the two people's reactions to the unusual event

A servant's advice

Honour, Sophia's maid, is a very talkative, she speaks a lot because she is very confused, upset and worried. She has to say Sophia that she should be married the next morning with Blifil, a man she didn't love. Sophia is both surprised and shocked and she asked her what is to be done in her terrible situation. Honour thinks that Blifil is a charming, sweet ad handsome man and she would find no difficulties in marring him. Sophia told her not to say such stuff.

Sophia is a very self - reliant girl and she doesn't need many words, she doesn't need to talk much.

Fielding and Hogarth

One of the milestones in Fielding's life was his friendship with the painter William Hogarth, a relationship which had a great mutual influence on each other's works. There are in fact certain characters in Fielding's novels, so rich in details and physical peculiarities, that impress the reader's mind with the same immediate incisiveness as Hogarth's personages.

Fielding was inspired by the same principles that moved Hogarth (whom he considered as a model and guide) since both used their art to give an accurate panorama of the national life and spirit.

Hogarth, in his turn, maintaining that his paintings were like theatrical representations, described his purpose in a famous passage. He considered himself not only an artist but an author whose works were to be seen as scenes of a drama. His paintings in fact reflect a new concept of art quite analogous to the realistic and moralizing fiction of the early century.

Conclusions

Fielding tried to warn against the falsification of words and concepts contained in books like Richardson's Pamela. Fielding proposed a world in which words had resumed their traditional significance. And so "virtue" now no longer meant the suppression but the manifestation of natural instincts, although obviously controlled by reason and tending towards a natural goodness. He used irony with a didactic purpose.

THE ANTI - NOVEL Þ LAURENCE STERNE

The anti - novel

Laurence Sterne is the writer who gave birth the so - called "anti - novel". Sterne wrote a work which is quite the opposite of the novel, in the sense of the literary genre which was developing at the time.

Novel characterized by a plot, by a narrative and a chronological order, by communication, by a progressive sequence of events with a beginning and a conclusion. Sterne chose disorder as his narrative principle, broke all logical links between episodes, interrupted the progression of events with continuous digressions, wrote an "open" work without beginning or end, produced unpredictable characters and introduced non - communicating dialogues long before modern experiments in this manner.

LAURENCE STERNE (

Sterne was born in Ireland. He began writing when he was already forty - five.

Is most important works are:

The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman his masterpiece.

A sentimental journey through France and Italy translated into Italian by Foscolo.

TRISTRAM SHANDY

List of the very few major incidents found in each volume:

Vols. I - II - III many digressions. Volumes concerned with the circumstances of Tristram's birth, even including the way in which the child was conceived. Vol. III, moreover, contains the Preface of the book, which the author finds time to work while everybody else is busy with Tristram's birth.

Vol. IV discussion on noses (provoked by the fact that Dr. Slop, the obstetrician tending Mr. Shandy during her labour, mistook the infant's hip for its head , and flattened its nose with his forceps). It also describes how the child was baptized Tristram by mistake instead of Trismegistus.

Vol. VI is mainly devoted to battles and to the amorous disappointment of Uncle Toby. It also includes the breeching of Tristram, now a young boy who must wear trousers.

Vols. VII - VIII describes the author's travels in France.

Vol. IX is mainly devoted to the pursuit of Uncle Toby by the amorous Window Wadman.

Features

Sterne's anti - novel, as it is often called because of its anomalous, derives from the fusion of a new technique with older elements:

The older elements are:

The picaresque form, seen in:

The patchwork of episodes and the apparently limitless length of the novel,

The prevailing sense of chance that dominates the work,

The mock - heroic treatment of certain subjects,

The cast of characters,

The conventional biographical form,

the new technique is based on:

The association of ideas,

A new sense of time (doesn't follow the chronological sequence of events).

What was really new in Sterne was the attempts to set this association within time sequences which were no longer ruled by the clock, but by individual consciousness.

On the basis of this theory what is important is no longer a chronological sequence of events (typical of the realistic novel), but what the character fells and thinks: not facts but the emotional implications of facts. This is why Sterne uses first - person narration and bases his book on an overlapping of memories that the protagonist describes in an apparently illogical sequence of progressions and regressions.

ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS

The passage is written in the first - person. Tristram itself narrates about the night when he has been conceived. Tristram was conceived in the night between the first Sunday and the first Monday in the month of March of the year 1718. His conception was interrupted by a trivial incident that his mother asked his father in the middle of that important event: Tristram mother asked his father if he had not forgot to wind up the clock. The question had been caused by the fact that Mr. Shandy, one of the most regular men in everything he did, had made it a rule to wind up a large houseclock and to have sexual intercourse with Mrs. Shandy on the first Sunday night of every month. That is why, by an unhappy association of ideas, his wife could never hear the said clock wound up but the thought of some other things popped into her mind, and vicevesra. Hence her question, which, by interrupting what Tristram's parents were about when they begot him, may have negatively affected the formature and temperature of his body, genius and mind and influenced the transfusion of the animal spirit from father to son.

Baffling content

Tristram, for example, in spite of the introductory chapters, is not born until the third volume and virtually disappears in the sixth, to reappear suddenly as a gentleman on his travels in France. The reader is thus baffled not only by this, but also by other tricks: the preface is written half - way through the third volume, and chapter 24 in volume 4 is totally omitted, while chapter 18 and 19 in volume 9 are left blank, to be supplied (out of sequence) a few es later.

TRISTRAM BREECHES

It's a dialogue between Mr. Shandy and his wife about Tristram's Breeching. Tristram's parents discuss about if it is time to put Tristram into breeches, about which is the batter material for them and how they have to be done. It is not a real dialogue, it is a sort of assenting repetition while Mr. Shandy is trying to do more than simply agree . Mrs. Shandy doesn't cooperate because she is not interested in the matter, she has no opinions of her own and she known she has no actual say in the matter. She gives irrelevant answers and her attitude is irrelevant and annoying.

Baffling form

Some of the most striking eccentricities are connected with the form and layout of the book. The chapters vary in length, from whole es to a single sentence. The writer makes use of dashes and asterisks, or draws strange irregular lines, or even leaves some es blank or black or marbled.

Conclusions

Evan though Sterne was influenced by other writers, his contribution to English fiction was remarkable. Breaking all the rules that had hitherto characterized 18^th century English narrative, he wrote an anti - novel, whose technical virtuosity, open structure and dissociation of time paved the way for such 20^th century writers such as Proust and James Joyce (Ulysses 1922)