Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T09:57:26.696Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Stock the Parish with Beauties”: Henry Fielding's Parochial Vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Scott Mackenzie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The parish and the social systems it sustains are prominent in Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews. His parochial vision, formulated across the range of his literary, critical, and juridical writings, constitutes an intricate scheme of surveillance, discipline, and care that Fielding hoped to see applied throughout the nation. He combines a plan for reforming oversight of the poor (from the intimate confines of parish management through the supervisory offices of the county and the magistracy) with a heuristics of judgment and discrimination, based on the visible authenticity of poverty and verified by the ridiculousness of affectation, which he exemplifies through the antiromance of Joseph Andrews. Romance, for Fielding, is the literary version of affectation, a transgressive masquerade that belongs to social emulation and that can be unmasked by a “test of truth,” derived from the third earl of Shaftesbury's Characteristicks.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 606 - 621
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Addison, Joseph. “The Allegory of Lady Credit.” 3 Mar. 1711. The Spectator. Ed. Donald F. Bond. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. 14-17. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akenside, Mark. The Pleasures of the Imagination: A Poem. 3rd ed. London: R. Dodsley, 1744. Print.Google Scholar
Austen, Jane. Jane Austen's Letters. Ed. Faye, Deirdre le. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Jones, Vivien. London: Penguin, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Bender, John. Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Coley, William B. “The Background of Fielding's Laughter.” ELH 26.2 (1959): 229–52. Print.Google Scholar
Certeau, Michel de. Heterologies: Discourse on the Other. Trans. Massumi, Brian. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986. Print. Theory and Hist. of Lit. Ser.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. “Omniscience.” Narrative 12.1 (2004): 22–34. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Corrected ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Dickie, Simon. “Joseph Andrews and the Great Laughter Debate.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 34 (2005): 271–332. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryden, John. Selected Poems. Ed. Zwicker, Steven N. and Bywaters, David. London: Penguin, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Dyson, Jeremiah. An Epistle to the Rev. Mr. Warburton, Occasioned by His Treatment of the Author of The Pleasures of the Imagination. London: R. Dodsley, 1744. Print.Google Scholar
An Essay on Civil Government. London: R. Willock, 1743. Print.Google Scholar
Fielding, Henry. Editorial. Covent Garden Journal 4 Apr. 1752. Rpt. in The Covent Garden Journal and A Plan of the Universal Register Office. Ed. Bertrand A. Goldgar. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1988. 171-75. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fielding, Henry. Editorial. Covent Garden Journal 20 June 1752. Rpt. in The Covent Garden Journal and A Plan of the Universal Register Office. Ed. Bertrand A. Goldgar. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1988. 268-73. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fielding, Henry. An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers. Dublin: G. Faulkner, 1751. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fielding, Henry. “Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men.” Miscellanies. Vol. 1. London: A. Millar, 1743. 181–227. Print.Google Scholar
Fielding, Henry. “A Fragment of a Comment on Lord Bolingbroke's Essays.” A Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon. Dublin: James Hoey, 1756. 171–90. Print.Google Scholar
Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews. Joseph Andrews and Shamela. Ed. Douglas Brooks-Davies and Martin C. Battestin. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. 10–304. Print.Google Scholar
Fielding, Henry. Preface. Joseph Andrews and Shamela. Ed. Brooks-Davies, Douglas and Battestin, Martin C. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. 3–9. Print.Google Scholar
Fielding, Henry. A Proposal for Making Effectual Provision for the Poor. London: A. Millar, 1753. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones. Ed. Bender, John and Stern, Simon. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Frank, Judith. Common Ground: Eighteenth-Century English Satiric Fiction and the Poor. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Thomas B. The Eighteenth-Century Controversy over Ridicule as a Test of Truth: A Reconsideration. Atlanta: School of Arts and Sciences Research Papers, Georgia State U, 1970. Print. Research Paper 25.Google Scholar
Gray, Charles. Considerations on Several Proposals Lately Made for the Better Maintenance of the Poor. London, 1751. Print.Google Scholar
Jones, Anthea. One Thousand Years of the English Parish: Medieval Patterns and Modern Interpretations. London: Windrush, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Kelsall, Malcolm. The Great Good Place: The Country House and English Literature. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth. Their Fathers' Daughters: Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and Patriarchal Complicity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Mackie, Erin. Market à la Mode. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
McKeon, Michael. The Origins of the English Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
McKeon, Michael. The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Elledge, Scott. New York: Norton, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Parkes, Christopher. “Joseph Andrews and the Control of the Poor.” Studies in the Novel 39.1 (2007): 17–30. Print.Google Scholar
Paulson, Ronald. The Life of Henry Fielding: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Print. Blackwell Critical Biog.Google Scholar
Pope, Alexander, and Arbuthnot, John. Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. London: Hesperus, 2002. Print. One Hundred Pp. Ser.Google Scholar
Potkay, Adam. The Story of Joy: From the Bible to Late Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Pounds, N. J. G. A History of the English Parish: The Culture of Religion from Augustine to Victoria. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Samuel. Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded. Ed. Sabor, Peter. London: Penguin, 1985. Print.Google Scholar
Schmidgen, Wolfram. Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of. Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. 3 vols. London, 1711. Print.Google Scholar
Smollett, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Ed. Ross, Angus. London: Penguin, 1967. Print.Google Scholar
The Statutes at Large concerning the Provision for the Poor. London: J. Baskett, 1741. Print.Google Scholar
Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Ed. New, Melvyn and New, Joan. London: Penguin, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Taylor, Geoffrey. The Problem of Poverty, 1660-1834. London: Longmans, 1969. Print. Seminar Studies in Hist.Google Scholar
Terry, Richard. “Akenside and the Controversy over Ridicule.” Mark Akenside: A Reassessment. Ed. Dix, Robin. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2000. 108–31. Print.Google Scholar
Valenze, Deborah. The First Industrial Woman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Webb, Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice. English Poor Law History, Part 1: The Old Poor Law. Hamden: Archon, 1963. Print. Vol. 7 of English Local Government. 11 vols.Google Scholar
Webb, Sidney. The Parish and the County. Hamden: Archon, 1963. Print. Vol. 1 of English Local Government. 11 vols.Google Scholar
Zangerl, Carl. “The Social Composition of the County Magistracy in England and Wales, 1831-1887.” Journal of British Studies 11.1 (1971): 113–25. Print.Google Scholar
Zirker, Malvin R. “General Introduction.” An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increases of Robbers and Related Writings. By Henry Fielding. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. xvii-cxiv. Print. Wesleyan Ed. of the Works of Henry Fielding.Google Scholar