Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
Style and Technique in Joseph Andrews:
Fielding's novel Joseph Andrews was a major innovation in form and style. He claimed that he was writing a new type of literature-“a comic epic in prose". The preface to Joseph Andrews is significant in that it endeavors to expound a theory of the novel. According to Fielding, the new type of novel would combine the state and serious purpose of the epic with the realism and humor of comic writing. The novel is richly comic and utilizes a wide range of comic techniques, including irony, coarse physical humor, bathos, and comic set-piece situations.
Joseph Andrews is written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes the author of Don Quixote. Indeed, after the initial ten chapters, the herò along with Parson Adams is cast onto the roads to encounter a series of misadventures before they reach their destination. The picaresque mode helps Fielding in the development of his comic theory - that of ridiculing the affectations of human beings. The picaresque mode of the novel helps the author make his characters encounter a variety of people and a large section of society on the long journey from London to the countryside. Though admittedly loose in structure, Joseph Andrews is unified by a theme. All its incidents and characters project the theme of a discrepancy between appearance and reality, affectation and truth, hypocrisy, and inherent goodness.
Written in the picaresque tradition Fielding's Joseph Andrews is a great novel of all times. It is one of the most successful novels for the magnetic beauty of its structure. In this novel plot and characters are not related by a cause-effect scheme. The unity is achieved by means of recurrent themes. Fielding vividly depicts the character and their manners in Joseph Andrews. He also gives a realistic picture of eighteenth-century English society with its vices, follies, and frivolities as well as good qualities like charity, benevolence, and chastity.
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