by Simon Stern, Henry Fielding, John B. Bender
- A vrai dire, poursuivit-il, il est un degré de la générosité (de la charité, devrais-je dire) qui semble avoir quelque apparence de mérite, c'est quad, partant d'un principe de bonté et d'amour chrétien, on donne à autrui ce dont on a soi-même un besoin réel; quand, pour diminuer la détresse d'aut...
Tom Jones, a bastard of infamous parentage, is nevertheless raised by the kind Squire Allworthy as a gentleman. He loves the neighboring Squire's daughter, Sophia, but has no problem sleeping around with the less scrupulous common girls while waiting for his chance with her. His foster father loves ...
I'm slightly trepidatious about reviewing Tom Jones, because Fielding does not like critics. In fact, he is so kind as to say this about them: If a person who pries into the characters of others, with no other design but to discover their faults...deserves the title of a slanderer...why should no...
This is a very early novel, published in 1749, and it's telling in several ways this was written when the form was young. There are eccentric spellings, erratic capitalizations, and dialogue isn't set off in the convention we're used to, but has various speakers lumped into one paragraph. There are ...
Clever, Mr. Fielding, clever. In anticipation of criticism of his work, he dedicates the first chapter of Book XI to future critics. He lays on a guilt trip. Then he tacks on a quote from Shakespeare for added effect: Besides the dreadful mischiefs done by slander, and the baseness of the mean...
Wowzas! What a lot of waffle!The history of the novel is perhaps one of a decline in the use of the Authorial Voice, which was still quite prevalent in the Victorian era. This book, written shortly after the failed second Jacobite Uprising of 1745 has more Authorial Voice than I can remember in any ...
It's not easy to say this book deserves one or three stars: it's just too old for it. It's value resides in that it's one of the earliest novels in the English language and the genre itself was just finding its footing. The storyline itself is really funny and interesting but I found the style too r...
900 pages later, I can confirm what my friend Wales told me: this book has nothing to do with the Tom Jones who asked, "What's new, pussycat?"Instead, it's a massive blow-up of a classic Shakespeare comedy that exactly follows the classic structure: our likable heroes are introduced; a series of mis...
Tom Jones, generous and likable, emerges as Tom Sawyer “grown up,” a version of what Leslie Fiedler termed the “Good Bad Boy.” From the beginning, Fielding tells us that Tom is a “bad” boy, but undercuts this by citing exaggerated examples such as his being “already convicted of three robberies, viz...
Log in with Facebook 
