Henry Fielding

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  • Baker, Sheridan. "Bridget Allworthy: The Creative Pressures of Fielding's Plot." Tom Jones: The Authoritative Text, Contemporary Reactions, Criticism, edited by Sheridan Baker, pp. 778-786. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. Originally published in Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 52 (1967): 345-56. (Argues that an examination of the little-studied character of Bridget reveals something of Fielding's technique in creating Tom Jones.)
  • Bartschi, Helen. "Character's Speeches: Transparence and Intertextuality." The Doing and Undoing of Fiction: A Study of Joseph Andrews, pp. 72-115. Beme: Peter Lang, 1983. (Focuses on the characters of Slipslop and Lady Booby, with attention to the use of language.)
  • Campbell, Jill. "Fielding and the Novel at Mid-Century." The Columbia History of the British Novel, edited by John Richetti, pp. 102-126. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. (Examines Fielding's drama and fiction to demonstrate his contribution to the development of the English novel.)
  • Cruise, James. "Precept, Property, and 'Bourgeois' Practice in Joseph Andrews." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 37, 3 (1997): 535-552. (Maintains that Fielding is not altogether successful in his attempt to render the novel Joseph Andrews into a source of sound moral instruction for his readers.)
  • Evans, James E. "The Social Design of Fielding's Novels." College Literature 7, 2 (1980): 91-103. (Claims that Fielding's novels can be better understood by examining the complex social relationships between the characters, rather than analyzing the allegorical nature of the characterizations.)
  • Foster, James R. "Sensibility Among the Great and Near Great." History of the Pre-Romantic Novel in England, pp. 104-138. New York: MLA, 1949. (Discusses Fielding's Amelia in the context of more sentimental novels by Richardson, Goldsmith, Smollet, and Sterne.)
  • Goldgar, Bertrand A. "Jonathan Wild." Critical Essays on Henry Fielding, edited by Albert J. Rivero, pp. 35-56. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1998. Originally published in General Introduction, Miscellanies by Henry Fielding, Esq., Vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 1997). (Discusses the sources, cultural influences, and textual history of Jonathan Wild.)
  • Harrison, Bernard. Henry Fielding's Tom Jones: The Novelist as Moral Philosopher. London: Sussex University Press, 1975. (Defends Fielding's reputation as a moral philosopher. The concluding chapter offers extensive analysis of Jonathan Wild.)
  • Irwin, Michael. "Didacticism in Fielding's Plays." Henry Fielding: The Tentative Realist, pp. 24-20. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. (Describes Fielding's efforts to incorporate several genres into his plays, arguing that Fielding was largely unsuccessful as a dramatist.)
  • Michaelson, Patricia Howell. "The Wrongs of Woman as a Feminist Amelia." The Journal of Narrative Technique 21, 3 (1991): 250-261. (Compares Mary Wollenstonecraft's posthumously published work The Wrong of Women; or, Maria with Fielding's Amelia, and proposes the theory that the later work is an intentional revision of Fielding's last novel.)
  • Ortiz, Ricardo L. "Fielding's 'Orientalist' Moment: Historical Fiction and Historical Knowledge in Tom Jones." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 33, 3 (1993): 609-628. (Discusses the "Gypsy Episode" in Tom Jones to analyze Fielding's various approaches to realism and history.)
  • Plank, Jeffrey. "The Narrative Forms of Joseph Andrews." Papers on Language and Literature 24, 2 (1988): 142-158. (Links Fielding's use of interpolated episodes in Joseph Andrews to the conventions of Augustan poetry.)
  • Preston, John. "Plot as Irony: The Reader's Role in Tom Jones." Tom Jones: The Authoritative Text, Contemporary Reactions, Criticism, edited by Sheridan Baker, pp. 778-786. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. Originally published in ELH 35 (1968): 365-80. (Suggests that the irony and plot structure of Tom Jones function to educate the reader in comprehending Fielding's innovations of form.)
  • Rothstein, Eric. "Amelia." Systems of Order and Inquiry in Later Eighteenth-Century Fiction, pp. 154-207. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. (Argues that Fielding returns to a theatrical mode in his last novel; finds it flawed but nonetheless a good example of the epistemological concerns of the era.)
  • Rothstein, Eric. "Virtue and Authority in Tom Jones." Critical Essays on Henry Fielding, edited by Albert J. Rivero, pp. 141-163. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1998. Originally published in The Eighteenth Century 28 (1987): 99-126. (Discusses Fielding's attempt to create model readers through narrative authority in Tom Jones, arguing that the visibility of the narrator's intention may undercut his efforts.)
  • Scheuermann, Mona. "Amelia." Social Protest in the Eighteenth-Century Novel, pp. 13-40. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1985. (Discusses Fielding's portrayal of political and legal corruption in Amelia. The critic suggests that in this novel Fielding explores a variety of interactions between the individual and society, noting especially where societal expectations are difficult for the average person to meet.)
  • Scheuermann, Mona. "Henry Fielding: Tom Jones and Amelia." Her Bread to Earn: Women, Money, and Society from Defoe to Austen, pp. 96-133. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993. (Examines Fielding's ambiguous presentation of women characters in the cited novels. Scheuermann concludes that Fielding's unrealistically idealized heroines set an impossibly high standard.)
  • Smallwood, Angela J. Fielding and the Woman Question: The Novels of Henry Fielding and Feminist Debate 1700-1750. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. (Argues that gender roles and the social position of women are important, unrecognized themes in all of Fielding's works.)
  • Wilner, Arlene Fish. "Henry Fielding and the Knowledge of Character." Modern Language Studies 18, 1 (1988): 181-194. (Suggests that Fielding may be more skeptical about the proper interpretation of character than earlier scholarship allows.)
  • Wilputte, Earla A. "Ambiguous Language and Ambiguous Gender: The 'Bisexual' Text of Shamela." Modern Language Review 89, 3 (1994): 561-71. (Advocates a more serious examination of the use of language in Shamela, arguing that the text reveals Fielding's attraction to the ambiguity of language.)

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