Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

Thomas R. Cleary (University of British Columbia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1749

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
- Bildungsroman
Picaresque

Resources

Tom Jones (1729), the novel generally considered Henry Fielding’s masterpiece, richly lives up to the generic formula he earlier applied to Joseph Andrews: it is a fully developed “comic epic in prose”. The subject-matters it treats epi-comically are very precisely those of the Bildungsroman (the novel of growing up or maturation) and the novel of moral and social testing and education. As implied in its full title, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, a central issue is the true parentage of Tom and thus of his personal, familial and class identity, so that the novel has affinities with traditional romance where obscurities and suddenly resolving clarications of true identity are common, and also …

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2232 words

Citation: Cleary, Thomas R.. "Tom Jones". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 November 2001 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8394, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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