Henry Fielding's Life and Works
Prepared by: Dhaval Diyora
Roll No: 05
Paper – 2: The Neo-Classical Literature
M.A (English): Sem -1
Enrollment No: 2069108420190013
Batch: 2018-20
Email: d.d.diyora@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt .S. B Gardi, Department of English,
MK Bhavnagar University.
Topic: Henry Fielding's Life and Works
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Henry Fielding
Birth and parentage.
Henry Fielding was born on 22nd April 1707 at Sharpham Park in Somersetshire in an aristocratic family claiming its descent from the famous Hapsburgs. His father Lieutenant Edmund Fielding was one of Marlborough's generals and his mother Sarah Gould was the daughter of Sir Henry Gould, a judge of the King's Bench. Henry was their eldest child. His mother died in 1718 and his father married again.
Early life.
Fielding received his carly education from the family chaplain, Mr Oliver of Montcombe who is said to be better fitted for the care of swine than of children. All that he read at this stage was the Bible and some traditional romances. Next he went to Eton, where he gained proficiency in classical languages Greek and Latin. He had hardly left Eton when he got enamored of Sarah, the daughter of a deceased merchant of Lyme Regis and even planned abducting her. But his plans never materialized. The girl was promptly transferred to the care of another guardian and married off. All that the frustrated youth could do was to translate a part of Juvenal's sixth Satire into verse 'as all the revenge taken by an injured lover.
Fielding the dramatist.
After a brief stay at Leyden, where he studied Civil Law, Fielding returned to London in 1728 and threw himself recklessly into all the pleasures of London life. In those days, playwriting being the only reliable means of making a living by the pen, Fielding embarked upon a dramatic career and, except tragedy, tried his hand at every kind of dramatic composition- comedy, farce, burlesque. In a few years, he became a prolific if not a successful dramatist. The more notable among his plays are :Love in Several Masques (1728),The Temple Beau (1730),The Tragedy of Tragedies, or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1730-31),The Covent Garden Tragedy (1732),The. Miser (1733),Don Quixote in England (1734),Pasquin (1736) and The Historical Register for the Year 1736 (1737).
The scurrilous references to Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister and the pungent attacks on the policies of the government made by Fielding particularly in his Pasquin and The Register provoked the wrath of the authorities and in 1737 they passed the Theatrical Licensing Act by which the number of theatres was reduced and Lord Chamberlain's license was made an indispensable preliminary condition for stage production of any play. Burlesque being the only successful line of Fielding, it became impossible for him to get any license. Hence his dramatic career was abruptly cut short .
Fielding had inherited a decaying variety of Congreve's Restoration Comedy that gave little inspiration for serious writing In the beginning of his dramatic career, he did not have much experience of human heart, In addition, his financial insecurity often obliged him to produce slipshod work. Thus, as a dramatist, Fielding could not achieve any outstanding success Had he continued, he might have excelled at least in that kind of drama of which we consider Ben Jonson to be the great master, but that was not to be for it enabled him to construct his novels on dramatic principles.
Marriage law, 'The Champion'.
In Nov. 1734, Fielding married a Salisbury beauty Miss Charlotte Cradock, the original of both Sophia and Amelia, whom he had been regularly courting for about four years. He spent some extravagant time with his wife in the countryside but was soon back to London, struggling harder than ever. In November 1737, he was admitted as a student at the Middle Temple. He assiduously applied himself to the study of law and was called to the banin 1740, but made little headway in this profession, Meanwhile, he had never given up his literary pursuits. In November 1739, there appeared the first number of The Champion, a newspaper published thrice a week and written mainly by Fielding and his friend James Ralph.
Richardson's 'Pamela'; Fielding's 'Shamela'.
In November 1740, Samuel Richardson published his Pamela or Virtue Rewarded. The novel took the entire reading public by storm, but Fielding was annoyed at the utilitarian concept of morality that Pamela stood for. In this novel, an attractive servant girl success fully resists her employer's attempts to seduce her and eventually prevails upon him to marry her. Fielding felt that this concept of virtue as advocated by Richardson in his novel was far removed from the true Christian virtue. It was in fact 'a code of calculated chastity with material goods for its earthly reward' He parodied Pamela in his Shamela revealing Richardson's chaste heroine to be no better than a common prostitute.
' Joseplh Andrews', 'Jonathan Wild'.
Shamela was a best a brief joke. It did not satisfy fielding's desire to expose the moral absurdities of Pamela. This he undertook to do in a much longer work-Joseph Andrews (1742). Its hero is Pamela's brother, a remarkably handsome and equally virtuous young footman who successfully resists the advances of his lascivious employer, a rich landlady. The parody is sustained till the tenth chapter, after which the novel takes a life of its own. It is evident that Fielding by now was beginning to find his moorings as a novelist. Only a year later appeared his three volumes of Miscellanies which include Journey from This World to the Next One and The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great. The latter, a piece of sustained irony, examines the nature of greatness and morality.
Life by now had become pretty hard for Fielding. The best art of the next two or three years he had to devote virtually to hack work. He was 'reputed and reported the author of half the scurrility, bawdry, treason and blasphemy which these few last years have produced'. In 1746, his wife died at Bath. This was a great shock to Fielding who had passionately loved her. However, in 1747, he married his maid Mary Daniel, who made him a good wife.
'Tom Jones'.
In 1748, through the efforts of Mr. Lyttleton, Fielding's old school fellow, he was made a principal Justice of peace for Middlesex and Westminster. Two other friends of his john, Duke of Bedford and Ralph Allen of Bath, provided him with the necessary means of livelihood and at the instance of Lyttleton, by the middle of 1746, he had begun work on Tom Jones. It took him nearly two years to complete this novel. It was probably completed in November 1748 and published in 1749. The new type of genre that Fielding had accidentally discovered in Joseph Andrews was systematically developed in Tom Jones.
'Amelia'.
Fielding's last novel Amelia, a much less spirited work, appeared in 1751. It reflects its author's pre-occupation with social problems and his deep interest in his professional life.
'Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon'.
Fielding's health was gradually deteriorating and in 1754, he was advised to go to Lisbon The journey was highly uncomfortable and its hazards are described at length in the Journal of a Yoyage to Lisbon. It was in August that Fielding reached there and in October, he was no more.
Fielding the man.
An estimate of Fielding the man can be accurately made from a study of Tom Jones, Amelia and The Voyage to Lisbon. He was a young man of enormous animal vigor with good connections and friends among the privileged classes. He as turned loose in London with a shadowy allowance and invited to make his way by his wits, so we can safely visualize what sort of a career he could have in the initial stages.
Fielding's outstanding quality was his infinite capacity for pleasure. He treated life very casually and recklessly. His happy constitution made him forget every evil and his cousin Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was persuaded that he had 'known more happy moments than any prince on earth'. Later, when he had to act as a magistrate, he was fairly sob. red down, yet he never lost his 'indomitable buoyancy of spirit'. He was very much like his friend Sir Richard Steele, to both of whom was given 'that irrepressible hopefulness, and full delight of being which forgets tomorrow in today.
Fielding was generous to a fault. He would often forego his own satisfaction to fulfill the needs of others. After he took over as a magistrate, he kept an open table for all his friends. In addition to a rare capacity for enjoyment under all circumstances and a generosity of temper, Fielding had a certain disposition to good fellowship. His concept of virtue was a genuine feeling of benevolence and he was very critical of calculated prudence. He hated all kinds of pretensions. In fact, hypocrisy and heartlessness were the greatest vices in his eyes. He gave as much importance to one impulse as to one's actions. Like his immortal hero Tom Jones, he had led a reckless life and had often faltered and sinned; still, he was by and large a noble personality. As a magistrate, he was alert and energetic, as a husband kind and tender, as a friend loyal and hospitable, and as a writer original, vigorous and very interesting.
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