Literary Criticism (1400-1800) | The Epistolary Novel - Ian Watt (essay date 1956)

Ian Watt (essay date 1956)

SOURCE: “Shamela,” in Fielding: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Ronald Paulson, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962, pp. 45-51.

[In the following essay, which first appeared in slightly different form in 1956, Watts claims that Henry Fielding's intention in Shamela, a satire on Samuel Richardson's Pamela, is to attack religious ideas of virtue and to undermine Richardson's interpretation of his heroine's character. Watts argues further that this latter purpose gives the novel its basic narrative form, as it begins and ends with letters exchanged between two parsons about Richardson's novel.]

Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded was published on November 6th, 1740. It immediately became the sensation of the literary season, and a swarm of attacks, parodies, and spurious continuations soon appeared to sour Richardson's remarkable and unexpected triumph; of these the first and easily the best was...

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