Henry Fielding's poetical history

Henry Fielding sought to combine in his prose narratives the advantages of poetry (in the classical sense of "imaginative literature") and those of history: to correct history by subjecting it to poetic principles of selection, unity, probability, and universality, and to correct poetry (particularly prose romance) by emphasizing its grounding in observation and experience--to create, that is, a "poetical history." The historiographical tradition from which Fielding draws his inspiration ("exemplar history") posits that great mean direct the course of history; that the examples of great men instruct youth more effectively than do the precepts of philosophers; and that examples not only persuade, but also implant motives of right conduct. The implicit uniformitarianism of this tradition subverts Aristotle's distinctions between history and poetry: that history, unlike poetry, is particular, not universal, episodic, not unified, and restricted to unidealistic actuality. Fielding seeks to develop a "historical" voice which depends for its credibility on probability rather than historicity and to design characters which are exemplary of general truths and at the same time useful models of conduct in the actual world.;In A Journey from This World to the Next and Jonathan Wild Fielding tests various narrative voices and techniques for conveying doctrine dramatically as well as rhetorically. Mixed "characters," drawn from the middle station of life, take the place of "great men" as examples. He devotes his greatest artistic energy to the pattern of "the gentleman," and in Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia he creates gentlemanly characters which demonstrate both the advantages and the dangers of emulation. The rich mixture of the "comic Epic-Poem in Prose," however, begins to dissolve in Amelia, which dwells, in a manner more particular than universal, on the way things actually are. In The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, Fielding purports to renounce poetry altogether. Nevertheless, the actual narrative of the Journal makes clear that at the end of his career Fielding still brought his understanding of poetic reality and form to bear on the prosaic problems of representing truth through history.