Don Quixote

Joseph Andrews is fields first novel. It is a classical example of a literary work which started as a parody and ended as an excellent work of art in its own right. The work Fielding intended to parody was Richardsons first novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded which had interpreted England by storm in the years following 1740 when it was first published. In his novel Fielding intended in the beginning to show how chick Booby (aunt of Lord B. in Richardsons novel) attempts the virginity of Joseph Andrews, described as the virtuous Pamelas buddy but in the end discovered to be different.The whole tendency was preposterous. But after Chapter IX Joseph Andrews seems to break away completely from the buffer intention. Parson Adams, who has no counterpart in Pamela, runs away with the novel. He is whiz of the most living, lovable, rumal bundles of wisdom and simplicity in all literature. In the words of Edmund Gosse, Parson Abraham Adams, alone, would be a contribution to English lett ers. He indeed is the hero of the novel, and not Joseph Andrews.Fielding was aware of giving a new literary form with Joseph Andrews which he called a comic big in prose. Fielding is a great master of the art of passage also. Fieldings broad human sympathy coupled with his keen observation of eventide the faintest element of hypocrisy in a person is his basic plus as a master of characterization. He laughs and makes us laugh at numerous of his characters, but he is never cynical or misanthropic. He is a pleasant satirist, sans malice, sans harshness.He gives no evidence of being wroth at the foibles of his characters or of holding a lash in readiness. His comic creations resemble those of Chaucer and Shakespeare. Parson Trulliber and Falstaff, if they were to meet, would have immediately recognized each some other Fielding is one of the greatest modeists in English literature. The same comic spirit which permeates his plays is also evident in his novels. As he informs us, the condition upon whom he modeled himself was Cervantes it is not surprising, therefore, that comedy should be his method.Fieldings humor is con spotrable in range. It rises from the coarsest farce to the astonishing heights of the subtlest irony. On one side is his zestful description of various fights and, on the other, the grim irony of Jonathan Wild. higher(prenominal) than both is that ineffable, pleasant, and ironic humor that may be found over in Tom Jones but is at its best in Joseph Andrews where it plays bid summer lightning around the figure of Parson Adams-an English cousin of fag out Quixote.Fieldings very definition of the novel as a comic epic poem in prose is indicative of the place of humor and comedy in his novels and, later, those of many of his followers. It may be pointed out here that Richardson had no sense of humor he was an unsmiling moralist and sentimentalist. Comparing the two, Coleridge says There is a cheerful, sunshiny, blowy spirit that prevail s everywhere strongly contrasted with the close, hot, tfay-dreamy continuity of Richardson. Fieldings humor is sometimes of the satirical kind, but he is never harsh or excessively cynical.