Lect8FieldingGray.docVIP

Lecture 8 Henry Fielding (Novelist) and Thomas Gray (Poet) Henry Fielding, remembered as the greatest novelist of the 18th century. Works: Joseph Andrews, Jonathan Wild the Great, Tom Jones, Amelia, The Historical Register for the Year 1736. Relate the general story Pamela and introduce Fielding’s first novel: Joseph Andrews Other Textbooks: Father of Modern Novels. Realistic novels? Further terms for research: The third person point of view (narratology, narrator,) introducing the omniscient third person point of view (god-like all-knowing narrator) Intrusive narrator with comments here and there. Before him, novels were either picaresque novels as Cervantes’ Don Quixote or Robinson Crusoe in the first person, or epistolary novels as Richardson’s The limited third person point of view as developed by Henry James (focus of consciousness, observe only through the eyes of the character or the narrator) Objective narrator who just tells the facts Style: Using grand language in describing common people, referred to as “Comic epic in prose”, treat tom as a hero in a grand style to describe a common thing; Satire abounds in his works. Suggested Reading: The entire introduction to Fielding. Second period: Thomas Gray a representative of sentimentalism and graveyard school of poets(墓园派诗人) *Graveyard School / Poets”: A term applied to eighteenth-century poets who wrote meditative poems, usually set in a graveyard, on the theme of human mortality, in moods which range from elegiac pensiveness to profound gloom. The vogue resulted in one of the most widely known English poems, Thomas Gray’s “Elegy written in a country churchyard”. The writing of graveyard poems spread from England to Continental literature in the second part of the century and also influenced some American poets. Thomas Gray棗揈legy Written in a Country Churchyard?8 yearscen of composition and polish, related to the death of his friend Richard West Theme: death, sorrows of life, sympathy for the p