"Cliff Notes - Tom Jones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

the nineteenth century." Most critics, however, don't find his
plays so praiseworthy. Mostly light and satirical, some
obviously dashed off to make money, they served best to train
Fielding's comic and dramatic gifts--gifts that reached their
height in Tom Jones.

Fielding's career in the theater ended suddenly. In 1737,
England's prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, a frequent target
of the playwright's satires, passed a law that effectively
barred Fielding from writing for the stage. His livelihood
destroyed, the struggling husband and father was forced to
resume the legal career he'd abandoned earlier. But he
continued to write, and soon he found a new target for his
pen.

That target was one of the first English novels ever written,
Samuel Richardson's Pamela, published in 1740. Pamela tells the
story of a maid who fends off her master's romantic advances so
he'll propose marriage instead. It was an enormous success, and
not just for literary reasons. Education, once an exclusive
privilege of the rich, was spreading to the middle and lower
classes. Shop-girls, bargemen, and carriage drivers were
learning to read. They weren't interested in the literature
taught to the aristocracy: Latin poems, Greek philosophies, or
stories about kings and emperors. They wanted heroes and
heroines they could identify with--heroines like Pamela.

Fielding understood the reasons for the popularity of Pamela,
but he still found the book and its author foolish and
sentimental, and viewed their success with amusement and
exasperation. He attacked Pamela twice. His first effort was a
hilarious satire, Shamela, published in 1741. (It's not known
for certain that Fielding was Shamela's author, but he is the
prime suspect.) Two years later, he published the tale of
Pamela's virtuous brother, Joseph Andrews.

A funny thing happened, however, while Fielding was writing
Joseph Andrews. The book, which he began as a satire, took on a
life of its own. In the end it became not just an attack on
Richardson but a great work in its own right. Fielding became,
with his rival, one of the pioneers of the novel. Joseph
Andrews was also Fielding's practice ground for an even greater
work, his rich and massive masterpiece, Tom Jones.

Tom Jones was written in the most difficult circumstances.
Unable to support his family solely by writing, Fielding had to
juggle both a literary and a legal career. He did it honorably;
eventually appointed justice of the peace, he shunned the bribes
and privileges that usually accompanied the office. Though an
aristocrat, he worked with tireless devotion to help London's