Rise of the Scene-and-Summary Novel

From the middle to the end of the eighteenth century, two figures above all serve as focal points for the development of a nascent theory of pacing in European literature: Henry Fielding and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In Fielding one encounters a notion of “prosai-comi-epic” pace that is light, centrifugal, and sprawling but opposed to another tendency that is more solemn, centripetal, and grave. Goethe, in his correspondence with Friedrich Schiller, is concerned with epic and drama: he and Schiller begin to distinguish between those two genres in terms of pace. What one can perceive in the intersection of such discourses is a formation, within novelistic fiction, of several axes of narrative movement that lead to the formation of units like scene and summary. If this seems like a straightforward path toward the nineteenth-century realist novel, one must pause and consider the aspects of romance that are embedded in novel pacing. Here, they appear as westering, world entry, and wandering.

Editorial

When I first studied the novel, the form was believed to have originated in the eighteenth century with the fiction of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson, and was synonymous with literary realism. The novel emerged from the Age of Reason, was closely associated with journalism, satire and conduct literature, and marked a profound break with the supernatural, fantastic and romance narratives of the past. Its perfect embodiment was to be found in the work of Jane Austen, even today an immensely popular writer, and widely regarded as a defining practitioner of the novel form. This kind of novel was/is in every respect different from Shakespeare: new, ‘novel’, not old; prose, not poetry; narrative, not dramatic; realist, not magical; fictional, not metafictional; and could deal with Shakespeare only as an objective feature of the society and culture being represented.

A study of digression as a narrative technique in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews

Digression is a notable literary device that conveys a temporary departure from the main part of the narrative to focus on unrelated issues explaining the background details. However, after the temporary move, the author returns to the central topic at the end of the narrative. In his remarkable novel Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding used various digressive or interpolated materials that add variety to the main plot. Here, Fielding deploys digression not as an exaggerated statement but rather as a part and parcel of the main plot. Such digressive or interpolated materials were expected to be related to the main plot by theme, moral, symbolic or ironic inverse relationship.

«The good comic novel»: la narrativa comica di Henry Fielding e l’importanza dell’esempio cervantino

«The good comic novel». La narrativa comica di Henry Fielding e l’importanza dell’esempio cervantino analyses the influence of Don Quixote on Henry Fielding’s fiction, starting with a survey of the reception of the Spanish novel in England. Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones are analyzed and compared with the Spanish novel, from which Fielding overtly borrowed some characters, episodes, and Cervantes’ parodic strategies. Fielding’s and Cervantes’s narrative proceeded from the parodic deconstruction and subsequent innovation of previous literature, with the main purpose of teaching and amusing the reader at the same time. Finally, the volume examines the role of Fielding and Cervantes in the rise of the fictional and the self-conscious novel.

Tarnished Virtues: From Richardson to Beardsley

The starting point of the article is a statement about “tarnished virtues” by one of the characters of Poor Folk, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first novel. The word combination evokes various associations, allusions, and numerous variants of interpretation. A remark on virtues made in the frame of an epistolary novel immediately recalls the novels of a coryphaeus of the genre, 18th-Century English writer Samuel Richardson, especially his first one, in which the word “virtue” appears in the title – Pamela Or, Virtue Rewarded. However, Richardson’s comprehension of virtue seems to be quite narrow, a fact that had been already noticed by his contemporary writer Henry Fielding, who wrote a parody on Pamela. A brief analysis of the parody discovers a common vision on the nature of virtue by both Fielding and Dostoevsky, which becomes even clearer when one finds out their mutual reference point – Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The article explores other novels by Richardson, his influence upon European literature as well as his inner correlation with such writers as Karamzin and Pushkin. Besides, the article investigates the question – raised by its author some years ago – of a certain similarity between the plotlines of Clarissa and Poor Folk, the appearance of “Lovelace” in Dostoevsky’s first book, and the sudden turn of the plot from Richardson’s glorification of virtue to Dostoevsky’s dramatic realism. A few interpretations of Poor Folk are briefly analyzed, including that of Aubrey Beardsley, who illustrated the novel. Several explanations of the sentence on “tarnished virtues” are explored, and finally, the author offers a new one.

Tarnished Virtues: From Richardson to Beardsley

The starting point of the article is a statement about “tarnished virtues” by one of the characters of Poor Folk, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first novel. The word combination evokes various associations, allusions, and numerous variants of interpretation. A remark on virtues made in the frame of an epistolary novel immediately recalls the novels of a coryphaeus of the genre, 18th-Century English writer Samuel Richardson, especially his first one, in which the word “virtue” appears in the title – Pamela Or, Virtue Rewarded. However, Richardson’s comprehension of virtue seems to be quite narrow, a fact that had been already noticed by his contemporary writer Henry Fielding, who wrote a parody on Pamela. A brief analysis of the parody discovers a common vision on the nature of virtue by both Fielding and Dostoevsky, which becomes even clearer when one finds out their mutual reference point – Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The article explores other novels by Richardson, his influence upon European literature as well as his inner correlation with such writers as Karamzin and Pushkin. Besides, the article investigates the question – raised by its author some years ago – of a certain similarity between the plotlines of Clarissa and Poor Folk, the appearance of “Lovelace” in Dostoevsky’s first book, and the sudden turn of the plot from Richardson’s glorification of virtue to Dostoevsky’s dramatic realism. A few interpretations of Poor Folk are briefly analyzed, including that of Aubrey Beardsley, who illustrated the novel. Several explanations of the sentence on “tarnished virtues” are explored, and finally, the author offers a new one.

Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews: A Classic Journey into the Souls of Mankind

This essay first gives some background to the making of Joseph Andrews: the seeds that fruited to make Fielding be labeled, by some critics, the ‘father of the English novel’. The essay goes on to discuss the heroes of this novel and their thematic significance. We then dwell on weaknesses found in the novel: those related to the heroes and other characters owing to weak characterization, and then the weaknesses that arise from the angle of narration. The essay concludes with a brief assessment of why Fielding is still considered a literary giant today. Keywords: Henry Fielding, comic epic, pilgrimage/journey, Josef Andrews, picaresque