The Problem of Amelia
Hume, Barrow, and the Conversion of Captain Booth
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16007289 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martin C Battestin (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1974 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 613-613 |
| Publication date | 1974-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | ELH (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-8304 • E-ISSN: 1080-6547 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2872725 |
| OpenAlex | W2318111467 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
Most readers agree that Amelia (1751), though his favourite Child, represents a decline in Fielding's powers as a novelist. In less than three years' time the feast of life that he had celebrated in Tom Jones (1749) appears to have staled for him. His tone has become darker, more monitory, in keeping with his subject-no longer the follies of men, but their errors anccupidities and the doubtful efficacy of those institutions, the law and the church, which were meant to preserve the social order. His narrator, whose genial, controlling presence in Tom Jones attests to the power of art to dispel confusion, less frequently makes his appearance upon the stage, and his voice, wavering between anger and a maudlin sentimentality, no longer inspires confidence. The qualities that make Amelia Fielding's most disconcerting novel, however, are those as well that make it, intellectually, his most interesting and ambitious work, the product of his maturest thinking about human nature and about the grounds of order in society. As the opening chapters declare, from one point of view the institutions of society are Fielding's principal subject-from the state of matrimony,2 that smallest unit of the polity, to the English 'constitution itself, by which he meant both the laws and the essential character and temper of
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| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |