Fielding's Tom Jones

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Jul 11, 2024

Guest

Judith Hawley, an expert in 18th-century literature, Henry Power, a scholar of Fielding's works, and Charlotte Roberts, a literature associate professor, explore the timeless classic 'Tom Jones' by Henry Fielding. They discuss Fielding's life parallels with Tom's journey, nuanced themes of morality, sexuality, and human nature. The guests delve into the humor and storytelling that define this novel while dissecting character complexities, especially Allworthy's duality, and emphasizing its relevance to modern society's challenges.

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INSIGHT

Development of Fielding's Prose

Fielding's prose developed through influences like Richardson and Cervantes.
He aimed to create a comic epic in prose, blending various literary styles.

INSIGHT

Tom Jones: The Foundling

Tom Jones is a foundling raised by Squire Allworthy.
Despite his good nature, Tom's impulsiveness leads to trouble and conflicts.

INSIGHT

Tom Jones: Libertine or Hero?

Tom Jones is described as a libertine and a rake.
However, Fielding also emphasizes Tom's good heart and inherent goodness.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling" (1749) by Henry Fielding (1707-1754), one of the most influential of the early English novels and a favourite of Dickens. Coleridge wrote that it had one of the 'three most perfect plots ever planned'. Fielding had made his name in the theatre with satirical plays that were so painful for their targets in government that, from then until the 1960s, plays required approval before being staged; seeking other ways to make a living, Fielding turned to law and to fiction. 'Tom Jones' is one of the great comic novels, with the tightness of a farce and the ambition of a Greek epic as told by the finest raconteur. While other authors might present Tom as a rake and a libertine, Fielding makes him the hero for his fundamental good nature, so offering a caution not to judge anyone too soon, if ever.

With

Judith Hawley Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

Henry Power Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter

And

Charlotte Roberts Associate Professor of English Literature at University College London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Reading list:

Martin C. Battestin with Ruthe R. Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (Routledge, 1989)

J. M. Beattie, The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840 (Oxford University Press, 2012) S. Dickie, Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

J.A. Downie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Henry Fielding (ed. John Bender and Simon Stern), The History of Tom Jones (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Henry Fielding (ed. Tom Keymer), The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (Penguin Classics, 1996)

Ronald Paulson, The Life of Henry Fielding: A Critical Biography (Wiley Blackwell, 2000)

Henry Power, Epic into Novel: Henry Fielding, Scriblerian Satire, and the Consumption of Classical Literature (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Claude Rawson, Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal under Stress (first published 1972; Routledge, 2021)

Claude Rawson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Henry Fielding (Cambridge University Press, 2007)