An autumn syllabus: Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones

Tom (Albert Finney) drinking among the military men on the road; A rare flashback in the two films: Bridget Allworthy (Tessa Peake-Jones) when young, waving goodbye to Mr Allworthy as he sets off for three months in Bath: she is pregnant, the man who impregnated her dead, and she will have his baby, our hero while Mr Allworthy is gone — a stealth female character (Tom Jones, 1963/1997)

A Syllabus

For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at George Mason University
Day: Eight Wednesday later morning into afternoons, 11:50 to 1:15 pm,
but over 9 weeks: Sept 21 to Nov 16, with October 19 cancelled
Tallwood, 4210 Roberts Road, Fairfax, Va
Dr Ellen Moody

Description of Course

For ten weeks the class will read and study Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones together. We will read essays on Fielding in the context of his age and several careers (dramatist, attorney-magistrate, journalist, novelist). Why was the book was called “immoral” then and how does it emerge from and today belong to strong satiric and erotic schools of art (from Swift and Hogarth to Richardson and Sade). Why in the 20th century it was adapted into oddly innocent films first filled with wild hilarity and sexual salaciousness, when it’s a deeply subversive and disquieting book. We will see clips from the two very good films: 1963 Tom Jones (Tony Richardson/John Osborne) and 1997 The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, a BBC mini-series. We’ll focus on the slippery narrator, the evasive nature of the text, and discuss themes like where power, sex and commerce; and the masks of social and psychological life. Can you imagine a world without novels? This is one of the books that established the genre

Required Text: Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, ed., introd., notes Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely. London: Penguin, 2005 (975 pages). An alternative recommended edition: The History of Tom Jones, ed. R. P. C. Mutter. NY: Penguin, 1983 (911 pages)

Tom’s Journey Across England (click on map, will make image much much larger, and allow clear comprehension)

Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

Sept 14: 1st week: No class but read for the first week: TJ, Bk 1, Ch 1 to Bk 2, Ch 5, pp 35-90. If possible, please also watch on your own one of the films, recommended one is the 1997 The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, the four part BBC mini-series and have come to the end by Sept 28. Or read the wikipedia article on Tom Jones so you know how the novel ends by Sept 28.

Sept 21: 2nd week: In class: An introduction: Fielding’s life, learning up to the censorship of his plays. Read for next time: Bk 2, Ch 6 – Bk 4, ch 12, pp 91-178.

John Sessions as Fielding come to life to direct his story as film (1997)

Sept 28: 3rd week: In class: the narrator, how to read an 18th century ironic amoral salacious novel. Read for next time: Bk 4, Ch 13 – Bk 6, Ch 7, pp. 179-265; Stevenson’s “Black George and the Gaming Laws.”

Oct 5: 4th week: In class: crime (mostly poaching, game laws), punishment & injustice, class. Read for next time: Bk 6, Ch 8 – Bk 7, Ch 15, pp. 266-352; read for next time Thompson on Personal Property and Money in Tom Jones, Eighteenth Century Fiction, 3:1 (1990):21-42; from Laura Rosenthal’s Infamous Commerce: Prostitution in 18th century Literature and Culture (Tom as prostitute).

Oct 12: 5th week: In class: ethics, money & sex, politics & history of realistic novel. For next time read Bk 8, ch 1 -Bk 9. Ch 4, pp 353-442; read also Stevenson’s “Stuart Ghosts.”

Oct 19: 6th week: Class cancelled. Read Bk 9, Ch 5 – Bk 11, Ch 7, pp. 443-530. If you have not yet re-watched the 1966 Tom Jones (most people have seen it), re-watch it.

Oct 26: 7th week: In class: Jacobitism, the theater, puppet shows. Read for next time Bk 11, Ch 8 – Bk 13, Ch 4. pp. 531-614; Read also J. Lee Green, “Fielding’s Gypsy Episode and Sancho Panza’s governorship,” Atlantic Bulletin, 39:2 (1974):117-21. Fielding himself, “The Case of Elizabeth Canning.”

Joan Greenfield as Lady Bellaston with Tom at the masquerade (1963)

Nov 2: 8th week: In class: masquerades, the real life of London, Patridge watching Hamlet. Read for next time Bk 13, ch 5 – Bk 15, Ch 5, pp 615-706. Read also Earla Willaputte, “Women Buried:” Henry Fielding and Feminine Absence,” Modern Language Review, 95:2 (2000)324-35. Also Anthony Simpson, “The Blackmail Myth and the Prosecution of Rape and Its Attempt in 18th Century London: the creation of a tradition,” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 77: 1 (1986): 101-150 (read just half this week and half for next).

Nov 9: 9th week: In class: when the novel becomes parable-like; epistolary narratives. Read for next time: Bk 15, Ch 6 – Ch 17, ch 4, pp 707-792. Ira Konisberg, “Review of 1966 Richardson/Osborne Tom Jones,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 4:4 (1992):353-355.

Nov 16: 10th week: Bk 17, ch 5 – Bk 18, ch 13 (the last) pp 793-887. Fairy tale and reality; Fielding’s later life & prose. We watch clips from the two movies.

A contemporary print of Ralph Allen’s Prior Park just outside Bath (click to enlarge)

The Hogarth print Fielding directs us to if we want to visualize Bridget Allworthy

Suggested supplementary reading and films (articles cited in calendar above sent by attachment):

Bertelsen, Lance. Henry Fielding At Work: Magistrate, Business and Writer. NY: Palgave Macmillan, 2000. Full of real interest: he connects the real life legal cases Fielding worked on and how his career in the employment cases and reveals fresh and persuasive ethical ways of reading Fielding’s fiction in context.
Campbell, Jill. Natural Masques: Gender and Identity in Fielding’s Plays and Novels. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995. Heavy-going but persuasive on Fielding’s sympathetic attitudes towards women across his work and life.
Hume, Robert D., “Fielding at 300: Elusive, Confusing, Misappropriated, or (Perhaps) Obvious?”, Modern Philology, 108:2 (2010):224-262
McLynn, Frank. The Jacobites. 1985; rpt. NY & London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988. Best single readable book.
Thomas, Donald. Henry Fielding. NY: St Martin’s Press, 1990. Much better on the life and Fielding’s basic attitudes than the reviews have been willing to concede. Very readable.
Stevenson, John Allen. The Real History of Tom Jones. London: Macmillan Palgrave, 2008 All the articles by him are chapters in this book; while he’s repetitive, and overreads, he’s so rich in insight and information, it’s one of those books on Tom Jones which can transform our understanding of it, and make it into a truly realistic, autobiographical, political and sociologically accurate novel.
Vickery, Amana. Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. Yale UP, 2010. Enjoyable reading and astute about women’s position, how marriage and home life was experienced in this era. Very relevant to Tom Jones.
Tom Jones. Dr. Tony Richardson. Writer John Osborne. Perf. Albert Finney, Susannah York, Edith Evans. MGM/1963.
Tom Jones. Dr. Meteyin Husein. Writer Simon Burke. Perf. John Sessions, Max Beasley, Samantha Morton, Ron Cook, Brian Blessed, Frances de la Tour, Benjamin Whitgrow, BBC/A&E/1997.

A bust of Fielding carved after his death (click to see beauty of the piece)

Relevant blogs on movies:

Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon & Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones: compared
Affectionately Dedicated to Mr Fielding: the 1997 BBC/A&E Tom Jones
La Nuit de Varennes: serendipitous life, 18th century style

Partridge (Ron Cook) kisses and hugs Tom (Max Beasley upon learning who the stranger is (one of my favorite moments from the 1997 TJ)

Sophie (Samantha Morton) and Honor (Kathy Burke) setting for on the road (fathers and sons, and women’s friendships will provide some of our themes ….)

Ellen