Historiography, the Novel, and Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews

Abstract

While many critics read Joseph Andrews as a response to Samuel Richardson's Pamela , this essay argues that Henry Fielding's "comic Epic-Poem in Prose" is as deeply concerned with the current state of historiography as it is with the development of the novel. Just as Fielding's narrator ridicules the prevailing vogue for intimate, detailed fiction over grand epic narrative, so he attacks the shift from a neoclassical style of historical writing to a modern style focused on the histories of ordinary men and individual private lives.

Henry and Sarah Fielding: The 2010s in retrospect

“…Through Joseph Andrews's misreadings of Pamela , Mack adds, Henry is also revealing the unviability of “biography” as a source of lessons for the present. For Noelle Gallagher (2012), by contrast, biography is the very heart of Henry's project. Noting that Joseph Andrews responds not only to Pamela but also to Colley Cibber's autobiography, Gallagher argues that “Fielding's narrator was calling for a return to neoclassical ideals in both historical and fictional narratives” (p. 638).…”