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Criticism in Fielding's Narratives and His Estimate of Critics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Specific study of the interesting critical dicta in Fielding's histories has been unreasonably neglected by scholars: Austin Dobson in his biography merely touches upon the author's general literary purpose as expressed in Joseph Andrews. G. M. Godden is content to take brief notice of Fielding's estimate of critics, and John C. Metcalf, in his essay “Henry Fielding, Critic,” is concerned almost exclusively with that phase of Fielding's opinion which is brought out in his dramas. In the monumental work of Cross, the subject as such is ignored, though Fielding's war with The Grub Street Journal receives ample exposition. Miss Thornbury's recent dissertation embodies a thorough commentary on Fielding's learning, and establishes him as a traditionalist in form, an artist practicing, in the light of reason always, established comic-epic rules. Yet such significant items as Fielding's quarrels with dogmatic critics, his convictions about travel books, plagiarism, and the essentials of a good writer, and his philosophy of character lie, in the main, outside the limits of her investigation. The only adequate approach to this subject has been that of F. O. Bissell, Jr., and it is perhaps not so thorough as might be wished, in spite of ample excerpts from the prefaces and digressional chapters of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934
References
1 Eenry Fielding (EMLS), p. 77.
2 Henry Fielding, A Memoir, p. 133.
3 Sewanee Review, xix (1911), 137–154.
4 W. L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding (Yale, 1918).
5 Ethel M. Thornbury, Fielding's Theory of the Comic Prose Epic, in University of Wisconsin Studies, No. 30 (1931).
6 Fielding's Theory of the Novel in Cornell Studies in English, No. 22 (1933).—In his initial chapter the author of this dissertation has made an excellent summary of the non-classical “sources of Fielding's theory.” These sources are, principally, the picaresque novels, the burlesque romance (“His novels are realistic like the picaresque novels, and satirical, like the burlesque romances”), the plays of Etheredge, Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, and the character sketches of Addison and Steele.—No effort is made, however, to explain Fielding's attitude towards the critics; the voyage to Lisbon is not within the scope of the study, nor is Jonathan Wild considered. The influence of the professional critics in shaping Fielding's theory is also given scant treatment, in spite of its obvious relevancy. Bissell's concern is rather with the outlines of Fielding's criticism as actually practiced in his two most widely-read works. Within these limits his contribution is sound.
7 Tom Jones (Part i), p. 67.—Textual references throughout are to the DeLuxe Edition, 6 vols. (Philadelphia, 1902). Miss Thornbury establishes the fact that the comic epic (the treatment of persons and deeds not of heroic proportions) was a commonplace of critical theory. The novelty of Fielding's contribution rather appears to lie in his ability “to give an epic sweep to the material of his own age, to combine modern material with the form of the Greek epic.” To notice the technical details in the histories is to realize “that Fielding had studied the whole problem and was consciously following the rules.” Op. cit., 99–102.
8 Joseph Andrews, p. 37.—Cross finds this indebtedness to Cervantes especially pronounced in Fielding's philosophy of humor: “The humor of Don Quixote lies in the incongruity between things as they appear to the general run of men and as they appear to a man who derives his knowledge of the world from books. The differences between Don Quixote and Parson Adams are not essential: while the former received his ideas from writings on chivalry, Adams went to Greek and Latin and, of course, to Scripture. Both are systematically absent-minded; Adams is so even to the point of forgetfulness.” This explanation does not seem adequate in the case of Fielding's minor characters. Miss Thornbury (op. cit., p. 157) quotes Fielding's own conviction (Preface to Joseph Andrews) to the effect that “the only source of the true ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation”—the incongruity between a person's pretensions and his inner being. This philosophy, probably derived from Molière (see Tartuffe, or Harpagon, the miser), appears more accurately to explain Mrs. Slipslop, Mrs. Towwouse, Parson Trulliber, and similar characters with whom the author is not in any great sympathy. This latter view is, in the main, consonant with that of Bissell, who believes that Fielding “overestimated his debt to the Spaniard. In the essentials of its greatness the kind of novel Fielding created owed little to the genius of Cervantes. It has not the air of romance, the aspiration after imaginary good, the vague longing after something more of Don Quixote. Then, too, each of Cervantes' leading characters has a kind of abnormal individuality of his own; as Hazlitt says, they do not so much belong to a class as form a class by themselves. Fielding set out to picture the ordinary life of his time, to give faithful pictures of men and women in ordinary walks of life. He had little use for the abnormal.” Op. cit., pp. 4–5.
9 Ibid., pp. 38–39.
10 Ibid., p. 39.
11 Ibid., p. 40.
12 Jonathan Wild, p., 114.
13 Tom Jones (Part iii), p. 340.
14 Ibid., p. 341.
15 Ibid. (Part i), p. 7.—Miss Thornbury suggests that in writing his prefaces Fielding was perhaps merely following the universal custom of his day, that prefaces appeared with “all epics, original or translations, serious or mock-epic.” Op. cit., p. 113.
16 Ibid., p. 169.
17 Ibid. (Part iv), p. 122.
18 Ibid., p. 123.
19 Ibid. (Part ii), p. 312.
20 Joseph Andrews (Part i), p. 118.
21 Tom Jones (Part i), p. 66–67.—To put it differently, Fielding is attempting to picture ideal truth, truth to human nature. History, according to Aristotle, is an account of what has happened; an epic, or a tragedy, is an account of what ought to be. “What Fielding seems to say is that his novels are invented or discovered histories, in that they are ‘true to life’ in the way that actual events are.” Thornbury, op. cit., pp. 139–40.
22 Ibid. (Part ii), p. 192.
23 Ibid., p. 193.
24 The fact that Wild, after deciding to drown himself when forced into the sea in a frail bark by the French captain, was “within two minutes after miraculously replaced in his boat.” Fielding explains, simply, that Wild, after leaping into the water, became frightened and swam back; he was rescued soon afterwards.
25 Fielding was doubtless familiar with Longinus' criticism of the Odyssey, because of Homer's having his hero upon the wreck for ten days without food, and for inserting “the incredible tale of the slaying of the suitors.” On the Sublime, W. R. Roberts, trans. The Great Critics (Smith and Parks, eds.), p. 49. Fielding, however, retains the surprising. This is implied in his statement that an author “may very well fall into the marvellous, but not into the incredible.” “Thus it is surprising that Tom Jones should prove to be Miss Bridget Allworthy's eldest son and hence his patron's nephew, but the supernatural need not be invoked in order to bring to pass the fact itself, or the discovery of this fact.” Thornbury, op. cit., p. 146.
26 Tom Jones (Part ii), pp. 185–186.
27 Ibid., pp. 186–187.
28 Ibid., pp. 86–87.
29 Ibid. (Part iii), p. 25.
30 Jonathan Wild, p. 4.
31 Art of Poetry (Christopher Pitt, trans.) Book iii, line 77. Smith and Parks, op. cit., p. 521.
32 Tom Jones (Part iii), p. 168.
33 Ibid., pp. 262–265.—In Ibid. (Part iii), p. 314–317 he refers to these same qualities as Genius, Learning, Knowledge gained “by conversation,” and “A good heart.”
34 Entertainment may have been his major desire, but one should not overlook the fact that, as he matured, Fielding's art became increasingly moral in temper. In his preface to Joseph Andrews, after talking about the value of a good man as a lesson in virtue to all his acquaintances, he adds, “But as it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way; the writer may be called in aid to spread their history farther, and to present the amiable pictures to those who have not the happiness to know the originals.” This view of art was certainly reenforced when Fielding read Le Bossu (Traité du Poème Epique), for the French critic had constantly emphasized the ethical element in literature. Fielding uniformly refers to him with respect, and valued greatly his analysis of the nature and structure of the epic. Finally, in the Convent Garden Journal (No. 10, February 4, 1752), Fielding condemns Rabelais and Aristophanes for using laughter for immoral ends. See Thornbury, op. cit., pp. 106–7.
35 Ibid. (Part iv), p. 247.
36 Preface to a Voyage to Lisbon. Miscellanies, p. 185–195, passim.
37 This emphasis may, it seems, be valid enough if through it the economic condition of the country visited be explained.
38 Ibid. (Part iii), p. 89.
39 Ibid. (Part i), pp. 253–254.
40 Ibid., pp. 252–253.
41 W. L. Cross, op. cit., i, 112.—The Grub Street Journal “was established in 1730 as the organ of an imaginary Grubean Society.” The jest of its founders was that it “hoped to do for literature what the Royal Society was doing for science. … As is now reasonably certain, the real power behind The Grub Street Journal was Alexander Pope, who not only contributed, under the signature of Mr. Poppy (”an excellent poet“—who supplied the verse) … but actually planned and maintained the newspaper as a concealed means of praising himself and lashing his enemies.” Politically, the Journal was Tory. After Fielding's Little Theatre, Haymarket, had been hounded out of existence, chiefly by threats on his actors, he went over to the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane, managed by Colley Cibber and his son. Of course, the paper attacked Cibber, his odes especially. Cibber was also supporting Walpole, nor did Fielding at this date seem particularly adverse to his policies. To the editors of The Grub Street Journal, he thus became identified with the opposition. Ibid., i, 122–123.
42 Ibid., i, 129.
43 Ibid., i, 132.
44 His name on the title page of The Modern Husband was printed Henry Fielding, Esq.
45 “Seasonable Reproof,” C. W. Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism, iii, 339.
46 Lady Mary Wrotley Montagu's remark was that Pamela was becoming “the joy of the chambermaids of all nations.” G. M. Godden, op. cit., 131.
47 Ibid., p. 133.
48 Austin Dobson, op. cit., p. 86.
49 Ibid., p. 141.
50 Godden, op. cit., p. 143.
51 The works of Rymer and Dennis were in Fielding's library. See Thombury, op. cit., pp. 168, 185.
52 Saintsbury, History of Criticism, i, 434.
53 Ibid., i, 429.