HENRY FIELDING: PERCEPTION IN THE DRAMA AND THE NOVEL (PARADIGMS, FEMINISM, PIRANDELLO)

Dramatist, novelist, and judge, Henry Fielding seeks to understand and eradicate the dangers that threaten his eighteenth century society. I investigate his understanding of his culture as revealed by those paradigms he incorporates into his works and shifts to encompass new significance. I classify the paradigms as legal, theatrical, psychological, social, and feminist. After I establish the presence of the specific paradigms in his plays and novels and survey critical attitudes about these patterns, I assess Fielding's paradigmatic transformations in the following chapters: Lawyers and Rapists; Fielding, an Eighteenth Century Pirandello; Mediated Desire; The Innocence of Doves and the Wisdom of Serpents; Perceptive Heroines. This dissertation demonstrates the psychological complexity of Fielding's characters, a depth that enables his audience members to assimilate more effectively and to apply more adroitly the skills of perception he advocates.