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289th out of 548 books
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312 voters
Joseph Andrews/Shamela
‘Kissing, Joseph, is but a Prologue to a Play. Can I believe a young Fellow of your Age and Complexion will be content with Kissing?’
Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding’s first full-length novel, depicts the many colourful and often hilarious adventures of a comically chaste servant. After being sacked for spurning the lascivious Lady Booby, Joseph takes to the road, accompanie...more
Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding’s first full-length novel, depicts the many colourful and often hilarious adventures of a comically chaste servant. After being sacked for spurning the lascivious Lady Booby, Joseph takes to the road, accompanie...more
Paperback, 432 pages
Published
November 1st 1999
by Penguin Classics
(first published 1742)
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Jul 08, 2008
Eric
marked it as to-read
One constant of the Life of Johnson is Johnson's praise of Richardson at the expense of Fielding. I've read neither but the tone of Johnson's appraisal (one is all noble sentiment, the other low raillery that teaches bad morals) is quaint and hectoring, and makes me want to read Fielding.
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Read Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" first. This is the hilarious spoof of that famous work. It's a literary geek necessity.
A rare combination of the high-brow and the bawdy comical. A journey completed by a host of characters, each loveable in their own way -- Joseph and his unfaltering nobility, Parson Adams with his focus on Christian virtues but also willingness to have a drunken brawl at every occasion, and the rest -- across eighteenth-century England. The intrigues and other contrived occurences work because they are such deft parodies of Defoe and Richardson. The narrative is frequently interrupted by a self-...more
Absolutely hilarious! Cudgel sticks and saucy jackanapes' abound!
I LOVE this story - it's ridiculous, it's fun, it's zany, and it's well-thought-out too! Parson Adams is a wonderful character and a very unique and full creation. Fielding does an excellent job of making us love him while also laughing at him. The story here is, at times, convenient, but the point (hypocrisy and vanity are ridiculous) comes across really well, as does the satire. I really enjoyed all the supplemental materials in...more
I LOVE this story - it's ridiculous, it's fun, it's zany, and it's well-thought-out too! Parson Adams is a wonderful character and a very unique and full creation. Fielding does an excellent job of making us love him while also laughing at him. The story here is, at times, convenient, but the point (hypocrisy and vanity are ridiculous) comes across really well, as does the satire. I really enjoyed all the supplemental materials in...more
I really enjoyed this book the second time around because I could understand a lot of the literary and mythological references much better. NOTE: Because this book is so old, I would recommend the Oxford World's Classics edition which has a great introduction and explanatory notes. I haven't read Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded, and I don't think that it is really necessary, at least not if you bother to find out about it and the feud between Richardson and Fielding (well explained in the OWC edition...more
I've always been fascinated and befuddled by Pamela: Virtue Rewarded so I was excited to find Shamela, a parody of it. And was amazed at the repeated use of the word "slut" in an 18th century work.
Joseph Andrews is a more substantial story, also full of wit but with more heart and less bite.
Joseph Andrews is a more substantial story, also full of wit but with more heart and less bite.
I read this for a class my sophomore year called "What Jane Austen Read" and these were perhaps the two most enjoyable books we read, aside from the Austen novels themselves. I personally hated the book "Pamela" and so I found the parody quite funny. Joseph Andrews was more serious and a very enjoyable read with a relatively light story ling. I'm enamored with the language of that period so I very much enjoy books of this time.
Shamela was funnier than Joseph Andrews. Joseph dragged. I'm sure it was much funnier in its time though, but not being able to appreciate references to now-obscure people or literature of the day I was rather left with the bawdy humour - Mrs Slipslop, Mr and Lady Booby, etc. Things picked up in the last 50 pages, and my first out-loud laugh was on page 277 (without spoiling it: when Parson Adams's long speech ending with Abraham and Isaac was followed by the servant coming in and announcing som...more
After reading "Pamela," Fielding's parody, "Shamela," was spot on--what an obnoxious character! "Joseph Andrews" was a great book in its own right, and I especially enjoyed the scenes with Parson Adams in some awkward situation or another...which is basically 2/3 of the story. Fun characters and great writing.
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This novel by Fielding was part of a parody in answer to Richardson's "Pamela", and follows the Don Quixote-like adventures of a gaggle of characters traveling together in the English countryside. Themes such as the importance of charity, social status, and academic learning vs. world experience crop up in this meandering 18th century self-aware novel.
It was hard for me to have feelings at all about Joseph Andrews. I didn't like Shamela much at all (it was funny for about a page or two). Generally non-impressive. I do, however, want to read more by this author, to see if this was just a poor choice.
From this book I learned that attractive women in the 18c were in constant danger of being groped or abducted, that reading Aeschylus does not make you an expert in irony, and that you should always be suspicious of the identity of your parents.
Richardson seems to me to be a prig; Defoe completely insufferable; Swift and Pope perhaps too smarmy even for me. And I like smarm. According to the introduction Fielding's meant to be more conservative than Richardson (these novels both take their main characters from Richardson's 'Pamela'), but as far as I can tell, this is an almost meaningless statement. Unlike Richardson and his characters, Fielding and his are warm and kind; Fielding attacks the stupidities of human kind that need attacki...more
Shamela is one of those anti-novel creations made to dissuade women from having "unrealistic" thoughts wedged into their minds. As if women were mindless creatures. But I have to say, it's smart, crisp, and funny.
Most enjoyable for its witty style and clever representations of human flaws with satire, it introduced me to an era somewhat effectively but did not fulfill me in a way to make me wish to read it again.
I don't think it is possible for me to review this book without thinking of "Pamela." Really, there is no contest. True, Richardson's prose is a little more approachable on a sentence level, but Fielding isn't generally presenting the thoughts of a naive girl. Beyond that, Fielding wins hands down. He isn't trite, his characters feel more fully human, and he's funny. More important, he only tells the things of interest that happen and doesn't stretch them out to four or five times the length of...more
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Read *Shamela*. May read other works of Fielding later for my MA exam. *Shamela* is fantastic -- witty and sarcastic, but only if you've trudged through the muck that is Richardson's *Pamela*.
Not Fielding's most brilliant work, maybe because it's too referential. Granted, Richardson's Pamela is well worth the stabs Fielding takes, but I want to go back to Tom Jones now because of what I knew it had and this doesn't. Fielding writes brilliant sentences and offers great and humorous looks into the human animal, but this isn't as compelling as the tale of the handsome young ne'er do well.
The thing is here, that while I think Shamela was a bit too obvious, as far as Fielding's satire goes, Joseph Andrews is incredibly good. It's hard to judge a book like this, when it has two distinct parts.
Shamela is worthless unless you've read the novel it is making fun of, Pamela by Samuel Richardson. It's funny, but just takes the same barbs you would expect at anything written from such a holier-than-thou perspective.
Strangely, Joseph Andrews is also a parody of Pamela, but is not so direct...more
Shamela is worthless unless you've read the novel it is making fun of, Pamela by Samuel Richardson. It's funny, but just takes the same barbs you would expect at anything written from such a holier-than-thou perspective.
Strangely, Joseph Andrews is also a parody of Pamela, but is not so direct...more
Read for EN3161: The Development of the Novel to 1840 (2012)
I really tried to finish "Joseph Andrews" but I found it so incredibly tedious, both as an audiobook and a physical book. There were so many classic references that I didn't understand that made me wonder whether a modern reader, without a classical education, can truly appreciate this book. I know that some people find the humour in this novel absolutely hilarious, but I wasn't one of them. I made it about halfway through this book bef...more
I really tried to finish "Joseph Andrews" but I found it so incredibly tedious, both as an audiobook and a physical book. There were so many classic references that I didn't understand that made me wonder whether a modern reader, without a classical education, can truly appreciate this book. I know that some people find the humour in this novel absolutely hilarious, but I wasn't one of them. I made it about halfway through this book bef...more
Mar 23, 2009
Chelsea
added it
From the curriculum of "The Rise of the Novel" course at the University of Westminster Spring 2009.
Although not really my kind of literature, Joseph Andrews has a lot of redeeming features: it is self-analytical, and takes time to consider literature in general. It's also quite funny at points, and very witty. I can't decide whether it's a 3 or 4 star piece of writing. Probably 3.5.
call me crazy, but i really liked this book when i read it in grad school. andrews is hilarious!
I loved Shamela, but found Joseph Andrews to be too long-winded. Make sure you read Pamela first!
I admit that I didn't get it... I didn't understand a single thing ...don't wanna even try ....
I was a little disappointed by this book. Both Joseph Andrews and Shamela had a few amusing moments... especially Joseph Andrews' ending, which was hilarious. In all honesty, I had trouble concentrating reading this one and actually trying to enjoy it. Too heavy and long.
Fielding mocks Richardson, does some other really smart things along the way.
It mocks Samuel Richarson's Pamela, a book which I strongly dislike. Add this to the comedy parts in the novel makes it a win in my book.
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Henry Fielding was born in Somerset in 1707. The son of a army lieutenant and a judge's daughter, he was educated at Eton School and the University of Leiden before returning to England where he wrote a series of farces, operas and light comedies.
Fielding formed his own company and was running the Little Theatre, Haymarket, when one of his satirical plays began to upset the government. The passing...more
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Fielding formed his own company and was running the Little Theatre, Haymarket, when one of his satirical plays began to upset the government. The passing...more
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“I have often wondered, Sir, [. . .] to observe so few Instances of Charity among Mankind; for tho' the Goodness of a Man's Heart did not incline him to relieve the Distresses of his Fellow-Creatures, methinks the Desire of Honour should move him to it. What inspires a Man to build fine Houses, to purchase fine Furniture, Pictures, Clothes, and other things at a great Expence, but an Ambition to be respected more than other People? Now would not one great Act of Charity, one Instance of redeeming a poor Family from all the Miseries of Poverty, restoring an unfortunate Tradesman by a Sum of Money to the means of procuring a Livelihood by his Industry, discharging an undone Debtor from his Debts or a Goal, or any such Example of Goodness, create a Man more Honour and Respect than he could acquire by the finest House, Furniture, Pictures or Clothes that were ever beheld? For not only the Object himself who was thus relieved, but all who heard the Name of such a Person must, I imagine, reverence him infinitely more than the Possessor of all those other things: which when we so admire, we rather praise the Builder, the Workman, the Painter, the Laceman, the Taylor, and the rest, by whose Ingenuity they are produced, than the Person who by his Money makes them his own.”
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