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Tom Jones
The narrator in Tom Jones describes the novel as "prosai-comi-epic". This definition characterizes the novel as an comic epic written in prose. Tom Jones shares with the epic style the...
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Tom Jones
Humor is something that provokes laughter and provides amusement. Common example here would be the normal/day-to-day jokes that one might hear from a friend (hence, we say that that person has a...
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Tom Jones
The basic theme of Tom Jones is vanity versus virtue. Fielding has always been an admirer of characters which represent the true respectability, nobility, honor, and virtue that is often shown in...
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Tom Jones
Certainly, there is much in Tom Jonesthat the modern day reader who experiences economic challenge could understand. Tom is poor and must revert to specific actions because of his impoverished...
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Tom Jones
Satire plays a significant role in Tom Jones and is evident from the outset. An amusing example is the satire thrown upon the misbegotten notions of propriety and modesty that besought the society...
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Tom Jones
Marriage in Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, is a rather convoluted affair (no pun intended, although there were more affairs in marriage than there was fidelity in...
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Tom Jones
Tom Jones's narrator is the author himself, namely, Fielding. He uses third person omniscient and is able to bring us the depth of each character as well as a strong story line told from his own...
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Tom Jones
Texts make various different types of demands on the reader. Some are densely written and philosophically complex. Others contain many moral ambiguities and challenge the reader's way of looking at...
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Tom Jones
The society of Tom Jones's 18th century was one in which classicism, elitism, new ways of community life, and social change was taking place. The aristocracy, particularly the nobility was held on...
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Tom Jones
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones was written during a time when fiction as a literary form was just emerging. Hence, there was a scope of much experimentation and newness. Potential of this new form was,...
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Tom Jones
Henry Fielding published The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (the novel's full title) in 1749, and it's never really gone out of style or out of print; it's the rare older novel that is enjoyed...
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Tom Jones
Fielding shows a range of attitudes and characterizations through the women in Tom Jones. The point which is most clearly illustrated is that characters who are innately good are not made so by...
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Tom Jones
Fiction is not history, but we can learn a lot about history by studying fiction. If you wanted to learn about the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens is a great place to start. A...
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Tom Jones
Squire Allworthy returns to his estate from London to find an infant abandoned in his chamber. He entrusts the child to the care of his sister and brings the boy, Tom, up as a member of the family...
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Tom Jones
The father-daughter relationships in Tom Jones is not one of Hallmark cards. IT's not as if the relationships are bad or abusive, but rather, they are just distant. Think about Squire Weston, and...
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Tom Jones
The Enlightenment's fundamental precepts about how human beings are good and how individuals are essentially created by their own experiences form the basis for Fielding's work. As a character,...
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Tom Jones
In Tom Jones, Henry Fielding explores several themes related to morality in the British society of his day. As he addresses the relationship between virtue and vice through diverse characters,...
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Tom Jones
For some reason, novelists in 18th century England often used the issue of incest as a plot device. Usually the incest was a near-miss. Siblings would be separated at birth and find out at the last...
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Tom Jones
The reader is introduced to the character of Sophia Western in Book 4, Chapter 2. Quickly, we realize that she is going to be the story's main heroine and Tom's major love interest. Tom is...
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Tom Jones
This is a more difficult question than it first appears to be. There cannot be many people in the twenty-first century who turn first (or at all) to eighteenth-century novels for comedy. Other...
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Tom Jones
The novel is told through the eyes of a narrator who many assume to be Fielding himself. However, Fielding also used many letters written by his characters. So, in essence, his characters help tell...
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Tom Jones
Fielding employs a variety of literary techniques to tell the story. He combines epic, picaresque, and epistolary forms. The technique that might be confusing is picaresque. Picaresque means...
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Tom Jones
Dialogue in Fielding's Tom Jones takes a second place to the narrator who, is a sense, is the main character since the narrator makes himself personable through an actual introduction and comments...
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Tom Jones
There is no difference between "epic" and "conventional epic." Let me explain. The epic originated as a poetic form and is governed by certain rules as to form, structure and style. For example,...
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Tom Jones
If by prefatory "essays" you mean (1) his dedication to Lyttleton, "To the Honourable GEORGE LYTTLETON, ESQ; One of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury" and (2) "Chapter i. — The introduction...
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Tom Jones
This is an excellent question, and it can best be answered by refering to the theme of jealousy, spite and revenge, and how it is shown to pervade all of the characters, no matter what their social...
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Tom Jones
In the most general sense, the relevance of these episodes is structural and thematic. That is to say, the novel blends structures from epic poetry and from the picaresque novel (such as Don...
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Tom Jones
First, one should note that the sentences in Tom Jones are not particularly long or complex for his period. Unfortunately, syntactic attention spans of English language readers and average sentence...
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Tom Jones
I believe the passage to which you are referring is the one where the puppet master is talking about morality in puppet shows. In these lines, the puppet master is saying that the importance of...