Fielding's Classicism

Fielding's attempt to cater to three audiences indicates that he anticipated more than a single response to his fiction. Readers who shared his knowledge of the classics would probably recognize the misuse of classical references as one signature of a given character and could identify with the narrator of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, or Amelia, appreciating the way he skillfully exploits allusions to ancient literature. Readers with only a smattering of Latin might initially identify with characters who rely heavily on Latin tags because that level of learning would most closely match their own, but they would be entrapped, because Fielding often links faulty learning and dubious morals. Fielding's least educated audience, who could be annoyed at untranslated quotations or would simply skip the classical references altogether, might misread characters who misuse classics -- as have some modern critics. Such readers might be blinded to characters' positive attributes by their hostile reaction to classical allusions and quotations; without other clues to personality, such an audience would probably rely more heavily on the narrator for guidance, thereby reinforcing his authority.

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One cannot deny that Fielding reacted to the works of Defoe and Richardson -- and to those of a host of other eighteenth-century writers -- and that he drew on genres such as romance and spiritual autobiography, which also influenced others. As Watt has demonstrated, however, Defoe and Richardson entirely rejected the relevance of classical tradition because of its supposed immorality. Unlike them, Fielding drewon the classics in developing his conception of the novel as a form and used classical authority extensively in his criticism and his discussions of morality. When he openly acknowledges his debt to ancient literature, he self-consciously distances himself from Defoe and Richardson and associates himself with others who drew from the classical tradition. By identifying his fiction with classical forms, Fielding calls attention to the differences between his "literary" novels and those of his contemporaries, and he establishes a legitimate genealogy based on another tradition.

-Nancy Mace, Henry Fielding's Novels and the Classical Tradition (1996)