Sometimes, like Mr. Hardcastle in “She Stoops to Conquer,” one needs a break from the world’s news.
Fielding satiric attacks on the cheats of his day could apply to Wall Street financiers and other wealthy Americans who refuse to share.
America is in many ways like the stage coach rides described by Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding.
Bloggers are facing confusion about rules similar to that faced by early novelists.
Responding to election day loss, will we be calm like Henry Fielding or in agony like Grendel?
Watching movies at home makes them something other than movies.
As I watched the amazing day of baseball last Wednesday, I found myself thinking (being the literature nerd that I am) that the English novel was invented to do justice to reality when it got this dramatic and complex.
Also posted in Defoe (Daniel), Dickens (Charles), Sterne (Lawrence) | Tagged Baseball, Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Lawrence Sterne, Robinson Crusoe, Sports, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy |
Homer gains Fielding’s admiration by his ability to move seamlessly between epic grandeur and “the shameless dog of the belly.” Perhaps it is Homer’s dexterity that gives Fielding the idea for his own contribution to “Great Eating Scenes in Literature.”
If you’ve been paying any attention to America’s budget battles, you know that Congressional Republicans are currently engaged in a dangerous game of chicken with President Obama over raising the debt ceiling. Today’s post on the subject features a parallel with Macbeth and a glance at famous literary sneers.
Also posted in Bronte (Emily), Shakespeare (William), Shelley (Percy) | Tagged "Ozymandias", Barack Obama, Budget battles, Congress, Debt Ceiling crisis, Emily Bronte, Eric Cantor, Henry Fielding, John Boehner, Macbeth, Percy Shelley, politics, Tom Jones, William Shakespeare, Wuthering Height |
Henry Fielding Yesterday my 18th Century Couples Comedy class concluded our discussion of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. We spent a lot of time talking about how it was popular with youthful readers in the 18th century, an idea I owe to J. Paul Hunter, my dissertation director at Emory University. Paul explores the issue in [...]
The Princess Bride, True Love Triumphant In my Tom Jones class earlier this week, one of my students (Erin Hendrix) noted that one of the passages made her think of a scene in the movie The Princess Bride. This led to a discussion of how both works employ irony to help us hold on to [...]
William Hogarth, “Morning.” I’ve just written a series of serious posts about literature and virtue, but since it’s Friday, let me go out of the week on a light note. Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones is not admired the way it once was, but one would be hard pressed to find any novel that is funnier. [...]
