Henry Fielding - Prof Ian Bell

This is an exciting new Series of lively, original and authoritative studies aimed at the student and general reader. Each book takes as its subject an author, genre or a single text. Some titles guide students through the perplexing cross-current of critical debate by offering fresh and forthright reappraisals of their subject.;Others offer new and timely studies of less familiar subjects which are of importance and value to the student. The series avoids a uniform critical identity or tight ideological approach, allowing the authors to explore their subjects in their own way, taking account of recent changes in critical perspective.;The eighteenth-century novelist, Henry Fielding (1707-54) is a key figure in both his own culture and in the history of the novel. Here, Ian Bell looks at how Fielding used his writing to express his concern with authority, both in literature and society, and discusses the biographical and cultural context in which Fielding operated.;Key Features: takes an innovative approach to Fielding's work, drawing on recent critical thinking; shows how Fielding used his deeply pessimistic social analysis and his comic vision to try to impose a literary order; presents Fielding as an exciting and provocative and ceaselessly controversial literary producer.;Readership: Level: Undergraduate students and academics. Course: English Literature, Eighteenth-Century Literature, the novel.