Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding , born the April 22nd 1707 close to Glastonbury and dead the October 8th 1754 with Lisbon, is a Romance cier, Dramaturge, Poète and Journaliste English.

Going down from the famous family of Denbigh, kid of the counts de Hapsbourg, it was wire of general lieutenant Edmund Fielding, society man ruined by his prodigalities. He was high with the young nobility, attended the colleges of Eton and Leyde and granted his London. Initially intended for the bar, he knew the embarrassment early, having exhausted his fortune in dissipation.

As of the twenty years age, it had to seek resources in its feather and made Comédie S and novels to live. It gave to the theater twenty-eight parts, several imitated Molière, of which none survived; with much of spirit, spirit and cheerfulness, it did not have the dramatic talent.

In 1735, it initially married Charlotte Craddock, of which it had early made exhaust the modest dowry, by carrying out the life of a gentleman of countryside, then while mixing with the direction of the theater of Haymarket. He studied the right then, was made admit with the bar, continued to compose of the parts and wrote articles of newspapers and lampoons in the direction of the liberal policy.

In 1741, the success of the Pamela or the Virtue rewarded for Richardson inspired the idea of a novel to him which would be the parody. Henry Fielding parodied Pamela twice: the first time, with the anonymous novel in Shamela writes with the same epistolary form as the original and, again in Joseph Andrews , where he imagines in Pamela a brother, as pure as this one, and which resists with the same virtue culprits advances; from there, the novel of Joseph Andrews , published in 1742, which, instead of a simple comic counterpart of Pamela , was to form an original and independent work, with excellent characters and very merry scenes. Fielding continued this humorous vein in its Voyage of this world in the other ( has Journey from this World to the next ) and in the Histoire of Jonathan Wild , kind of epopee of a highwayman, spy of police force, then receiver and finally hung, written on an ironic tone of admiration.

In 1749, the credit of some friends made obtain with the author the place of judge to the police force of London, places not very required, but which drew it from misery and that it fills with conscience and talent. It is even in this function, that it founded, in 1749, Bow Street Runners, that some called the first London police force. Fielding, which never lost the direction of humor, went even until emitting a warrant for arrest against Colley Cibber for “murder of the English language”! But the weak emoluments of this place being far from sufficing with its practices and its needs, it thus continued to write, and two new novels, Histoire of Tom Jones, child found (1750), his masterpiece considered as a model of the genre, and Amelia , published back-to-back, were at the same time successes of honor and money: the second was paid to him: 1000 pounds.

The novel of Amélia is a domestic portrayal of manners. By representing this husband, the Booth captain, who loves his wife and cannot remain to him faithful, and this so virtuous and so gifted woman who forgives all, Fielding obviously thought of his own household; but as one cannot sympathize with Booth and than the author however did not want to make it hateful, it results from this contradiction a tiring impression. Fielding is dépaysé in the pathetic one where Richardson is Master.

But the health of Fielding was dilapidated, the drop, the Asthme and other afflictions obliged it to use crutches. Having lost his wife and having married her maidservant to give a mother to her daughters, he died at the end of two months with the Portugal, where he had gone to seek a softer climate.

Though the first novels of Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Jonathan Wild , are not without merit, Tom Jones is much higher to them. The talent of observer and painter whose author had made proof, extends from here to the very whole company and sticks to the man himself. Byron does not have fears to call Fielding “the Homère in prose of the human nature”. The action of the novel, invented well and perfectly led, offers a succession of natural, probable events and nevertheless attractive, which support the interest and bring into play many characters as true as varied. Allworthy is the type of the benevolence; the squire Western, noisy, carried, tyrannical, without any delicacy of feelings, obtains some sympathy by a kind of brutal cordiality; Tom Jones and Sophie, the hero and heroin, repurchase what they miss delicacy by the youth of the heart, courage, the frankness and generosity. The characters subordinates, inter alia Partridge, are as well traced. What misses with this beautiful work, it is a certain rise. The degrading situation where Tom Jones is placed in his relationship with Bellaston lady, and later the suspicion of inceste who weighs on him, attest in the author a lack of moral tact which harms its literary qualities. However the work is not corrupting; it is even of a reading healthier than the novels of Richardson with great claims morals. “To take Fielding after Richardson, Coleridge, it said is as if one left a sick room heated by stoves, to pass on a broad lawn open to the breeze by a beautiful day of May. ”

Its Voyage to Lisbon appeared after its death in 1755. Its Œuvres was joined together (London, 1767,8 vol. in-8°; 1775, 12 vol. in-8°; London, 1833, 10 vol. in-8°). There exist several separate editions of Joseph Andrews and Amélia , and very many of Tom Jones , which was several times translated into French, in particular by Wailly, in the Charpentier library. Tom Jones was translated by Pierre Antoine of the Place, 1750; Guillaume Davaux, 1795; Louis-Claude Chéron of the Heather, 1804; Henri Huchet of Bédoyère, 1833; Auguste-Jean-Baptist Defauconpret, 1836; Leon de Wailly, 1841. Jonathan Wild was translated by Christophe Picquet, 1863 and Amelia by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni.

His/her sister, Sarah Fielding was novelist like him.

Works

Source

  • Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 786-7

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