Henry Fielding In Our Time: Papers Presented at the Tercentenary Conference
Editor: J. A. Downie
Date Of Publication: Nov 2008
Isbn13: 9781847189875
Isbn: 1-84718-987-3
Henry Fielding In Our Time publishes many of the papers presented at the international conference held at the University of London 19-21 April 2007 to commemorate the tercentenary of his birth.

Written by established scholars, including the acknowledged doyen of Fielding scholars, Martin C. Battestin of the University of Virginia, as well as younger scholars who successfully bring their recent research to bear on neglected areas of Fielding’s life and works, the essays offer a cross-section of current approaches to Fielding and his writings, from his ballad operas, poetry and political journalism , via Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Amelia—the novels for which he is still best known—to the social pamphlets written during his years at Bow Street as magistrate for Westminster and Middlesex.

The collection should appeal both to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics and general readers interested in the eighteenth-century in general, and Fielding’s contribution to the emergence and development of the novel form in particular.

J. A. Downie is Professor of English at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. His books include: Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (1979); Jonathan Swift, Political Writer (1984); and To Settle the Succession of the State: Literature and Politics, 1678-1750 (1994).

“Fielding as we are now coming to see him is far from being the same Fielding we thought we understood in the 1970s and 1980s. The year 2007 was the tricentenary of his birth, and the conference that was organized at the University of London by Alan Downie brought together a strikingly varied array of Fielding scholars prepared to suggest, question, and argue over what had once seemed a settled canonical figure. The eighteen contributors to the resulting volume of essays range from Martin C. Battestin (the acknowledged doyen of Fielding studies) to lively new Ph.D.s. This is a refreshingly undoctrinaire collection. Half a dozen of the essays tackle particular issues in Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia, but most of them explore territory well beyond the familiar ground of the novels. We have here accounts of Fielding’s literary relations (including his engagement with Milton), his work as a magistrate (still under-appreciated), his understudied ballad operas (some of them successful for decades), the politics and ideology of his very neglected poems, a contrarian reading of his heterosexuality, his presentation of London, his little understood relations with Eliza Haywood, and the problems of teaching his novels to present-day undergraduates. Some of the contributors send us to unfamiliar texts and others back to very familiar ones—but no previous collection of Fielding studies takes in so much of this seemingly familiar but still surprisingly confusing and contested canonical writer. These essays constitute a stimulating contribution to an ongoing reassessment that promises to force us to rethink our comfortable assumptions about a major author.”

Professor Robert D. Hume, Evan Pugh Professor of English Literature, Penn State University

“The generation-long neglect of Henry Fielding seems to be over. Here, in a rethinking mode, are some of the most distinguished 18th century scholars and critics and also a rich array of dynamic younger voices—all passionately determined to see Fielding anew. This is a fresh and important reconsideration of a variety of texts and issues.”

Professor J. Paul Hunter of the University of Virginia

“This important collection brings together a wide range of contributions from leading scholars of Fielding and eighteenth-century literary culture, giving a vivid and authoritative conspectus of contemporary Fielding studies, including not only fresh assessments of his most familiar work, like Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, but also significant new scholarship on such less well-served parts of his career as his poetry, his links with contemporaries like Eliza Haywood or Voltaire, and his place in musical theatre history.”

Professor Thomas Lockwood of the University of Washington

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)