The Relationship between the Novel Form and the Rise of Western Modernity:

Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (1742)

Purpose to discuss about a new take on the form of what we call today the novel by considering Fieldings
Preface to Joseph Andrews. Emphasis will be laid on the authors coinage of comic romance with a view to
understanding the question of generic instability tightly related to epistemological concerns (the way in which
truth is represented in the novel).
The Romance-Novel dichotomy
Romance and Novel terms used interchangeably throughout the eighteenth century in order to
characterise old fictional conventions; the term novel was not used in the sense in which we refer to it
today; rather, it was called history or true history translated as the claim to authenticity/objectivity
In the novel, naturalness and morality are not angelical, nor above probability (Dr. Johnson) the
novel articulates a discourse which shows that formal and historical issues are interdependent (i.e. the
novel read in its cultural specificity)
formal realism (cf. Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel [1957]) a set of narrative procedures, not a
doctrine, found together in the novel: repudiation of traditional plots and figurative eloquence,
particularization of character and background, naming, temporality, causation and physical environment
Fieldings consciousness of form
The problem of the new Species of Writing put in terms of generic instability/transformation
Fieldings formal strategy:
As it is possible the mere English reader may have a different idea of romance from the author of these
little volumes, and may consequently expect a kind of entertainment not to be found, nor which was
even intended, in the following pages, it may not be improper to premise a few words concerning this kind of
writing, which I do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our language. The EPIC, as well as
the
DRAMA, is divided into tragedy and comedy. HOMER, who was the father of this species of poetry,
gave us a pattern of both these, though that of the latter kind is entirely lost []
And farther, as this poetry may be tragic or comic, I will not scruple to say it may be likewise either in
verse or prose [] Such are those voluminous works, commonly called Romances, namely, Clelia,
Cleopatra, Astraea, Cassandra, the Grand Cyrus, and innumerable others, which contain, as I
apprehend,
very little instruction or entertainment.
Now, a comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose; differing from comedy, as the serious epic from
tragedy: its action being more extended and comprehensive; containing a much larger circle of incidents,
and introducing a greater variety of characters. It differs from the serious romance in its fable and action,
in this; that as in the one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and ridiculous: it differs
in its characters by introducing persons of inferior rank, and consequently, of inferior manners, whereas the
grave romance sets the highest before us: lastly, in its sentiments and diction; by preserving the ludicrous
instead of the sublime. In the diction, I think, burlesque itself may be sometimes admitted []

Comic romance a hybrid genre (camouflaged as novel) Fieldings patent of the novel as genre
(attempted hitherto in our language); mixture of comic epic and prose epic [heroic epic]; A
heroic epic has a hero, grand theme, a continuous action, a journey to underworld, wars, digressions,
discovery, high seriousness, a high moral lesson and bombastic diction
Comic epic/the mock-heroic mode/the low-mimetic mode (N. Frye); mundane, trivial, humorous
actions, burlas [incidents, not adventures] the picaresque [equivalent of the journey]; use of
prose, rather than poetry to reflect real and actual life and also to portray human nature as it is
(mimesis, verisimilitude)
According to N. Frye, comedys basic features are discovery (anagnorisis), reformation of society
and reconciliation which throw the comedy towards a happy ending
the comic abides by the rules of common sense because it confines itself strictly to Nature from the
just Imitation of which, will flow all the Pleasure we can this way convey to a sensible Reader ( JA,

26) the comic insists on the general truth about human nature derived from the neoclassical ideal
of la belle nature, which discloses an exemplary pattern in line with the truth of empirical
observation (good nature and benevolence)
Fieldings story disguised as history (what and how it happens metatext)
general comedy, laughter as a pleasure of life theorized by Shaftesbury and novelized by Fielding
laughing with, not at, general human types

Conclusion

CR reconfiguration of traditional romance conventions a stable modern genre in our

language (Written in Imitation of Cervantes)
A low, demotic genre with a claim to objectivity and historicity (nave empiricism, according
to McKeon)
Recourse to common sense, deep-seated in probability (the Book of Human Nature)
Celebration of communal happiness <-> poetic justice = authorial providence compensating
for providence as a principle of coherence in history and fiction
A model of portraiture ascribed to neoclassical history, explaining that the novel's characters,
although imagined, embody types with various historical incarnations (the use of nature and
history to render a copy of life and manners)