Buy Diazepam China Seldom does one reach the end of a 900-page novel and wish it had been longer, but that was my experience on first reading Henry Fielding’s classic from the early days of the novel, officially entitled The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, though generally known simply as Tom Jones. The book, originally published in 1749, was what Fielding would have called a “comic epic in prose,” as he had characterized his previous novel Joseph Andrews—written, as he would have noted, in the manner of Don Quixote (rather than in what he considered the sentimental, moralizing, and tediously didactic style of his contemporary in the burgeoning novel genre, Samuel Richardson). Indeed, the 900 pages of Tom Jones surely seems a walk in the park compared with the 1500 page slog of Richardson’s Clarissa. But Fielding’s rejection and parody of Richardson in his first two novels (Shamela and Joseph Andrews) involved a rejection of Richardson’s bourgeois morality, and his picaresque protagonist Tom Jones engages in a number of sexually explicit encounters.
https://livingpraying.com/9okzvzg3k6https://trevabrandonscharf.com/h702qy4 Thus Fielding’s novel came in for some moralistic backlash in its own day. No less a literary critic than Samuel Johnson condemned the novel, largely on account of its morality: In her memoirs, Hannah More (a poet and playwright in Johnson’s circle), wrote that “I never saw Johnson really angry with me but once, and his displeasure did him so much honor that I loved him the better for it. I alluded rather flippantly, I fear, to some witty passage in Tom Jones: he replied, ‘I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book. I am sorry to hear you have read it; a confession which no modest lady should ever make. I scarcely know a more corrupt work.’” And she went on to note how Johnson followed up by heaping praise upon Richardson in contrast.
followhttps://www.thephysicaltherapyadvisor.com/2024/09/18/3io7v0veov The great critic of the next literary generation, however—Samuel Taylor Coleridge—was of the opposite opinion: In his brief “Notes on Tom Jones” from 1813, Coleridge noted that in Fielding “There is a cheerful, sun-shiny, breezy spirit that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson.” And in the posthumous 1835 book Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great Romantic poet is quoted as saying “What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the Oedipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick room heated by stoves, into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May.”
follow urlhttps://everitte.org/vqq5b2mp It is Coleridge’s opinion (of Fielding at least) that has proved the lasting one. For me, of course, the novel is one of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language,” as I am including it here as number 32, alphabetically (you will notice when I get to the “R’s” that there is no Richardson there). And I am not alone: Besides Coleridge naming it as one of the three most perfect plots in all literature, the acclaimed novelist Somerset Maugham in 1948 named Tom Jones as the earliest of his “ten greatest novels in the world.” It also appears on the Guardian’s list of the “100 Greatest Novels in English” and on the Observer’s list of the “100 Greatest Novels of All Time,” and it comes in as number 22 on the BBC’s list of “100 Greatest British Novels.” (It must be admitted that Richardson’s Clarissa also can be found on the Guardianand the Observer list, and comes in as number 16 on the BBC list, but not mine. I’m going with Coleridge.)
go herehttps://livingpraying.com/lxt5ng7 To give you a taste of Fielding’s “most perfect plot”—and I can only give you a taste because I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t actually read the book—let me provide a summary of the novel’s exposition and initiating actions: The wealthy Squire Allworthy (and none of Fielding’s names are random) lives on a great estate in Somerset with his sister Bridget. One day the squire returns from a trip to London to find a newborn baby lying on his bed. A young neighborhood servant named Jenny Jones is thought to be the boy’s mother, and upon being confronted, she admits to having placed the boy in Allworthy’s bed, but refuses to name the child’s father. The squire takes the child in and asks Bridget to raise him, naming him Thomas Jones.
followsource link Bridget soon marries Captain Blifil, who fathers a boy with Bridget who becomes known as “Master Blifil.” The father soon dies of apoplexy, and Tom and Blifil are raised like brothers, though Tom is kind, honest, and lusty while Blifil is jealous and hypocritical. Tom finds a willing participant in his youthful passions in the gamekeeper’s daughter Molly, but he finds she has other lovers, and then falls truly in love with Sophia Western, daughter of Allworthy’s neighbor, Squire Western. Though Sophia returns Tom’s love, both squires are against the match because of Tom’s illegitimate status.
Buy Actavis Valium Onlineclick A serious turning point occurs when Allworthy grows ill and, believing he is dying, prepares to leave a good chunk of his estate to Tom, which angers Blifil (the legitimate heir). When Tom learns that Allworthy has recovered his health, he gets drunk in celebration, but Blifil spreads the story that while the squire was on his deathbed, Tom was getting drunk in anticipation of Allworthy’s death. This leads to Tom’s banishment from Allworthy’s estate, and to his picaresque wanderings for most of the remainder of the novel. It also leads to the expectation that Sophia will marry Blifil, a fate she cannot abide, and she, too, flees Somerset.
https://vbmotorworld.com/38fvblefsource site Much of what follows seems episodic, as picaresque novels tend to be, but in Fielding’s hands things do come together unexpectedly in the end. That’s the perfection of Fielding’s plot. But there is much more to Tom Jones than a rollicking good story. For one thing, as should already be clear, the novel satirizes the pretensions of the gentry and the assumptions about class in mid-eighteenth century England, as the bastard Tom (“who was certainly born to be hanged”) is a pillar of virtue compared with many of the novel’s upper class characters. Tom’s frank admission that “I have been guilty with women, I own it; but I am not conscious that I have ever injured any—nor would I, to procure pleasure to myself, be knowingly the cause of misery to any human being” is admirable in its honesty and its Christian charity in a way one does not see in the often hypocritical values of Fielding’s society. This is one of the things that make Tom Jones is a very modern, even post-modern, novel. Despite the fact that Fielding’s cast of characters is drawn from every branch and level of eighteenth century British society, and is set against the backdrop of the Jacobite uprising of 1745, these are characters—virtuous, flawed, repentant, villainous or hypocritical—that we still recognize and, with the novel’s narrator, laugh at.
source linkhttps://ragadamed.com.br/2024/09/18/8711mgo What makes it seem much less contemporary is the very Fieldingesque narrator, who knows everything and will often address the reader, commenting on the action of the novel. But this in itself is an interesting experience. One learns to think of the narrator as a friend and companion through the story. The book is divided into 18 books, and each book begins with prefatory comments by the narrator who, conscious that he is working in a new genre that he himself is helping to shape, will often comment on his own narrative technique. In the preface to the first book, he announces that his purpose in writing is to “explore human nature.” In his preface to book two, he makes the astonishing claim that “I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at liberty to make whatever laws I please therein.” How can such brashness not be entertaining?
https://marcosgerente.com.br/ef0xcqtusource url Fielding’s novel has been popular since its first appearance, and was turned into an opera as early as 1765. Three more operas have been created since, as well as both straight and musical stage adaptations, two BBC miniseries, and two film versions, one a musical. Of all these, the 1963 film adaptation (which won four Academy Awards including Best Picture), directed by Tony Richardson and starring an irresistible young Albert Finney as Tom, is most in keeping with the tone and spirit of the novel, and despite its shrinking the novel’s 18 books and 900 pages into two hours, could serve as an excellent introduction if you can’t quite decide to commit to the novel yet. Or, more ideally, read the novel and then watch the movie, and mourn for what is lost.
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