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Thread: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

  1. #16
    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    Finished it. It's taken about three months, but it was good. I like the way Henry Fielding attacks his critics in the introductory chapters. Now that I've finished the book, I have started the introduction. I can't remember reading any spoilers for Tom Jones, but I have for Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, which is quite annoying. Interestingly, the introduction says Henry Fielding used to write plays, but the then prime minister, Horace Walpole, brought in an act banning them. Some parts of the Tom Jones did remind me of a bedroom farce.
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

  2. #17
    Registered User prendrelemick's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kev67 View Post
    I wonder if any of the TV and film adaption have scenes of bare breasted women fighting like there are in the book. If not, why not?
    I've seen 2 screen adaptations. The 1963 film with Albert Finney, Susanna York and the brilliant Hugh Griffiths. Also the 1997 BBC one with Samantha Morton and Brian Blessed. Both are fantastic I would recommend both. They were both a bit risque. It depends whether you get the 12 or the 15 version.
    ay up

  3. #18
    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by prendrelemick View Post
    I've seen 2 screen adaptations. The 1963 film with Albert Finney, Susanna York and the brilliant Hugh Griffiths. Also the 1997 BBC one with Samantha Morton and Brian Blessed. Both are fantastic I would recommend both. They were both a bit risque. It depends whether you get the 12 or the 15 version.
    I bet I can guess which part Brian Blessed played.
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

  4. #19
    Registered User prendrelemick's Avatar
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    Yep you're right. I can't decide which Squire Weston I liked best - Hugh Griffith or Brian Blessed. Samantha Morton was the best Sophie and Albert Finney the best Tom. It's like a pick n mix. There was also The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones with Joan Collins, but that's another story .
    ay up

  5. #20
    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    I have started reading Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I have not got it with me, but I reached the point where Mr Thorpe and Catherine Morland talk about books. Mr Thorpe says he has better things to do than read novels, and that there hasn't been a good book since Tom Jones, except that he had read The Monk, which he considered a good read. I remember hearing someone on the radio say that Mr Thorpe damned himself with this sentence. The Monk was not a suitable book for a young lady. I think the speaker on the radio was author, P.D. James, who wrote detective fiction, and was a big Jane Austen fan. I have read The Monk, which I think must have been scandalous for the time. It's like something by Ken Russell. All right, so I presume Jane Austen did not approve of The Monk, but what did she think of Tom Jones? I am interested to know.
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

  6. #21
    Registered User Jackson Richardson's Avatar
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    Just finished reading it on Project Gutenburg. I can see why it was admired and loved as the Great C18 Novel - it isn't coy about sex unlike every other mainline novel until the C20.

    I agree Sophia is so sympathetic and having a life of her own in a way none of Dicken's wimpy heroines do despite being hailed as a paragon. However there is a double standard at work: Tom can have a sex life of his own (including being a keot toy boy for Lady Bellaston despite him going on and on about his honour). Sophia would lose her status as heroine if she did. I know Clarissa is bore of a book and Clarissa herself is should be too good to be true, but we are not constantly told that - we work it out from the characters own words without the jolly omniscient narrator constantly telling us. There's also more eroticism going on there.

    And despite the constant appeal to simple goodness, there is a repeated exposure of human deception, hypocrisy and malice which I found has too much relish in it.

    I agree Partridge is a bore.

    About the same time I read Tristram Shandy and I found the characterization far more gentle and sympathetic together with a full awareness of human self deception.
    Previously JonathanB

    The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1

  7. #22
    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    I will have to read Clarissa one day, but it won't be this year.

    Squire Western would have had very firms views regarding his daughter's virginity, but many of the other female characters were not exactly chaste. There was Molly Seagrim, Jenny Jones, Lady Bellaston, Nancy Miller, even Squire Allworthy's sister Bridget.They all got away with it. Compare that to Jane Austen in which even putting on a play was seen as immoral.

    Personally I liked Fielding's cynical view of human nature. Everyone was on the make, except for Squire Allworthy, who is naive and unworldly, despite being a magistrate. Sophie is not on the make neither, but she's our heroine, and Tom is not neither.
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

  8. #23
    Registered User Jackson Richardson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kev67 View Post
    I will have to read Clarissa one day, but it won't be this year.
    I wouldn’t be in a hurry. Dr Johnson said “Why Sir if you were to read Richardson for the story your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment.”

    There is an interesting comparison that both Sophia (deliberately) and Clarissa (accidentally) leave home to escape an unacceptable marriage. The odd thing is that for such a notoriously long book, there are very few characters. Tom Jones teems with characters but they are far more superficially presented.


    Quote Originally Posted by kev67 View Post
    Personally I liked Fielding's cynical view of human nature.
    I often enjoy cynicism (Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, etc) but there is something I find trite about Fielding’s. He seems to think that people must either have simple goodness or not. And life’s a bit more complicated.
    Previously JonathanB

    The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1

  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by kev67 View Post
    One thing I like about Tom Jones over Jane Austen's books, is that Henry Fielding does not ignore 95% of the population like she does. .
    I agree. :-) I like Fielding a lot. I read this book a few years ago.
    Right now, I'm reading 'Jonathan Wild' by him. I'm enjoying it very much.

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