This study is an examination of Henry Fielding's attitude toward the uses and abuses of language in the four newspapers which he edited: The Champion (1739-40), The True Patriot (1745-46), The Jacobite's Journal (1747-48), The Covent Garden Journal (1752). This exploration begins with a consideration of Fielding's attitude toward the corrupting and corruptible word and the relationship which he saw between the corruption and decline in language and the corruption and decline in ethics and morality. It focuses on these four journals largely neglected by previous Fielding critics, searching them for references to language uses and abuses and for the social theory underlying these remarks. This study moreover traces and investigates Fielding's seventeenth-century philosophical forerunners-Thomas Hobbes, Bernard de Mandeville, Anthony Ashley Cooper Third Earl of Shaftesbury, John Locke--and their profound effect on Fielding's ethos and ethics in particular and on those of the eighteenth century in general. Locke is discussed in most detail because he directly shaped Fielding's attitude toward language.Because language is a major tool of certain learned professions, three chapters examine Fielding's position in his journals on the uses and abuses of language as related to three groups of professionals: the clergy, writers and critics, and lawyers and doctors.This study suggests further areas needing investigation: (1) critical editions of The Champion and The Covent Garden Journal, (2) a comparative study of Fielding's journalistic efforts with those of Addison, Steele, Defoe, and especially Swift, (3) an examination of Fielding's attitude toward women in the four journals, (4) an exploration of the philosophical relationship between Fielding and Locke, (5) a comparison of Fielding's theories of language and society with those of two modern linguistphilosophers--George Orwell and Walter Ong.Fielding attempted in his four journals to restore a language that he saw as fallen into corruption and abuse. Language, he thought, often becomes corrupt first; then the corruptions in society follow. Fielding's four journals provide particularly useful indications of how seriously he took language, how prevalent he found its abuses in the professions of mid-eighteenth-century England, and how he hoped through purifying language to reform society itself in his own time. / Department of English

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Etudes anglophones : Lyon 2 : 2004. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. Notes bibliogr. Index.

An examination of the plays which Henry Fielding wrote before becoming one of England's greatest novelists has revealed that they possess strong comic merit and are worthy of serious critical attention. Before turning to the plays themselves, the critical corpus on Fielding's plays has been considered, and the nature and purpose of Fielding's dramatic burlesque has been defined.Fielding's burlesque embodies the serious comic purpose of exposing vice and folly in the theater. Specifically, Fielding objects to the restrictions imposed on playwrights by dramatic conventions as well as by the critics and theater managers; furthermore, he criticizes the rude behavior and insipid taste of contemporary playgoers.This theatrical criticism has illuminated Fielding’s comic craft, displaying the ways in which he uses the vehicle of vice and folly in the theater to expose these flaws in social, political, and professional institutions as well.

In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published his Leviathan. In it he analyses the passions and behaviour of men in an emerging market or competitive society. By posing his hypothetical "state of nature," he draws the conclusion that man is essentially a self-motivated creature. Lord Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, reacted to the picture of man drawn by Hobbes. In Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times, first published in 1709, Shaftesbury analyses the affections or passions and concludes that man is essentially benevolent. Unlike the Hobbesian picture, the Shaftesburian analysis shows man as outward-oriented, seeking the good and company of others. These theories or the doctrines of the heart (as I call them for the purpose of this thesis) were current in the eighteenth century and at a time when Fielding and Sterne wrote Tom Jones and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman respectively. The doctrines are reflected substantially in both novels. In Tom Jones, for example, Tom becomes the epitome of the doctrine of benevolence in his persistent performance of good works; Blifil, in his selfish attempts to supplant Tom, displays Hobbesian egocentricity. Uncle Toby and Mr. Walter Shandy each reflect aspects of both doctrines in Tristram Shandy. It is my intention to show in this thesis that the doctrines of egocentricity and benevolence inform both Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy, and that Fielding and Sterne react critically to the teaching of Hobbes and Shaftesbury in the process of their artistic creation. I shall approach the discussion chiefly by way of character analysis thus showing how the behaviour of the main figures in the novels suggests the thoughts of the philosophers. But the novelists' vision becomes clearer to the reader when it is seen in direct relation to the style of their works. In addition to the character analysis , therefore, I shall emphasize the narrative technique of each author, such as, the "comic- epic prose" of Fielding, the digressions as well as the "Shandean rhetoric" of Sterne, and attempt to illustrate how the style strengthens the awareness of the artistic vision. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the philosophy of Henry Fielding as expressed in his novel, Tom Jones as it relates to the prevailing philosophical thought of eighteenth-century England.

Zürich, Univ., Phil. Fak. I, Diss. von 1976. / Vollst. Ausg.: Europäische Hochschulschriften; Reihe XVIII. 9.

Defoe and Fielding were intensely concerned with the social conditions of the time. The upsurge in crime constituted a threat to the ordinary citizen as well as a danger to civilized values. As Fielding in particular showed, exploitation of the ordinary citizen took place under the guise of respectability. It was the task of the writer to remove this guise and examine the real motives behind the actions of a particular individual and judge that person according to strict moral standards. The criminal was not simply a member of the lower classes; he could be a member of the aristocracy or of the government. The times were corrupt; Defoe and Fielding had to come to terms with this corruption by examining the motives behind it and the possible remedies for it. The difference between the various levels in society becomes blurred in their writings in order to make the point that robbery on the highway and robbery by the apparently respectable memeers of society are one and the same thing; both have to be exposed in order to preserve civilized standards. Both writers were searching for the truth, and took care to examine the individual circumstances surrounding a person's lapse into crime so that the fairest judgement possible could be made. This seeking after truth guides them in their fight against crime and corruption

This thesis presents a biographical and literary study of Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding. It also looks at the romanticism and realism of Richardson, the realism of Fielding, and the differences between Richardson and Fielding.

[Typescript] Includes bibliography.

This thesis examines representations of trust in selected British sentimental novels of the eighteenth century. It focuses principally on the manner in which sentimental prose fiction reflects and participates in the shift from premodern to modern formations of trust. Commenting on the nature of modern trust, Anthony Giddens claims that, with the move to modernity, trust relations in the intimate sphere become increasingly dependent on emotional mutuality, while trust in institutions becomes increasingly impersonal and disengaged from assessments of moral character. / My work explores this dual shift in three sentimental novels. It first analyzes Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) and contends that Richardson denies the concept of honor its epistemological role in practical deliberations. The denial of the epistemology of honor uncouples the mechanism of personal trust from assessments of role and role performance and thus makes the trust in persons in the intimate sphere less dependent on institutional forms of trust. To replace honor's role in the formation of trust, Richardson proposes that the sentiments can provide reliable grounds for trust in the intimate sphere. However, he denies the sentiments a role in the formation of an encompassing social trust among strangers and mere acquaintances. The thesis proceeds to read Henry Fielding's Amelia (1751). In order to argue that Fielding envisioned divergent grounds for trust relations, it maintains that Fielding considers trust relations in the intimate sphere and trust relations in public life as based on the sentiments and fair distribution respectively. To conclude, the thesis investigates Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) to uncover the manner in which Goldsmith distinguishes personal trust in the intimate sphere from general system trust, which Goldsmith ultimately envisions as an ontological trust in providence.