![]() ![]() To write two – as Fielding had done with Shamela and Joseph Andrews – requires a kind of madness. To write one book-length parody of Pamela is an indulgence. ![]() Still, Fielding had a firm idea of what it wasn’t: Pamela, Samuel Richardson’s popular, sentimental 1740 epic on the virtues of chastity. Whenever debates about art and morality resurface – when critics start calling for characters to be consistently good, likeable, or virtuous – Tom Jones pops up to tweak their noses.įielding’s novel – which comes to the screen in a new ITV adaptation next week – is a raucous roar of “Huzzah for Mr Punch!” It was published in 1749, a glorious moment for fiction when nobody had quite figured out what a novel was. Tom’s disappointed: he’d much rather watch the naughty antics of Punch and Judy. It turns out to be “a very grave and solemn Entertainment, without any low Wit or Humour, or Jests”, “calculated to improve the Morals of young People”. Hundreds of pages into Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, the hero stops to watch a puppet show. ![]()
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