Coe, Jonathan (1986) Satire and sympathy : some consequences of intrusive narration in Tom Jones and other comic novels. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis aims to reinterpret Tom Jones by putting it into
some previously untried comparative contexts. As well as using
the traditional points of reference such as Lucian, Swift and
Sterne, I compare Fielding's satire with Flaubert's; his narrative
poetics with Dickens's and Beckett's; his strategy of intrusion
with George Eliot's; and his literary politics with Brecht's.
I start by assuming the ambivalence of Tom Jones, but rather
than seeing this as a conscious ironic duality, I argue that it
derives from literary, moral and political uncertainty. The
intrusive narrator is seen as an index of vacillation between
first- and third-person narration, while conservative satiric
influences are shown to complicate rather than strengthen the
book's moral decisiveness. Its form, moreover, is shown to be
dialogic, and unable to keep at bay either the reader's
subjectivity or the flux of historical reality. But Fielding's
achievement, I finally suggest, is to have put these factors
into the service of his awareness of the always judgmental
nature of literature.
The thesis therefore takes on several previously uncovered areas:
it is very specific about the nature and extent of the narrator's
presence in Tom Jones; it draws new analogies between social and
literary forms (in the sections on conversation) and political
and literary structures (in the section on Fielding's plays).
It thereby reveals new areas of Fielding's writings which can be
treated as literary theory; finds detailed affinities between
Fielding and writers not normally associated with him; and
eventually constitutes a reading of Tom Jones as an inconclusive
and open-ended text which implies not a denial but a redefinition
of its historical importance.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754. History of Tom Jones, English fiction -- 18th century -- History and criticism, Humorous stories, English
Official Date:	September 1986
Dates:	Date Event September 1986 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Extent:	iv, 343 leaves
Language:	eng

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