Concetti Chiave
- Henry Fielding valued qualities like frankness, generosity, and courage, opposing the Puritan focus on sexual morality.
- Fielding's characters are true-to-life, reflecting his understanding that people are neither wholly good nor bad.
- He utilized the picaresque tradition, creating adventurous and humorous narratives, as seen in Tom Jones.
- Fielding's characters span all social classes, providing a vivid and warm societal panorama.
- An intrusive third-person narrator engages readers through commentary and requests for their opinions.
A London Justice of the Peace closely in contact with life, Henry Fielding admired qualities like frankness, generosity, courage and openness of spirit, and rebelled against the tendency to equate morality with sexual control, so typical of the Puritan standards of the middle class. He valued people more for was in their hearts than for their actions. His morality was warm and compassionate, though stern to those who deliberately did harm others; he understood that people are neither totally bad or totally good, and he created characters that were true-to-life.
The reading public delighted in Tom Johns, because they understood him, and in reading about him the recognized themselves.Fielding drew on the picaresque tradition, by setting his characters on the road and involving them in a series of adventures told with humorous gusto. His Tom Jones presents a hero involved in a series of adventures which seem to be about to destroy him, but at the same time there is the comic awareness of the absurdities of life.
His characters, boldly and brilliantly, are drawn from all classes of society, and offer a panorama flooded with warm light. The plot is constructed with great care, and the various adventures and intrigues are shaped towards their climax by the hand of a dramatist. Fielding's experience in the theatre is also highlighted by the lively and vigorous dialogues, and by the fact that he tended to describe his characters through their words, but did not insist on the analysis of their thoughts or feelings.
His stories are told by a third-person omniscient narrator, who is also intrusive because he often intervenes to comment on the characters ans the events, associates with the reader and inquires his opinion. As a result the reader is constantly involved and amused.
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