Narrative and nation in Henry Fielding's later writings

This thesis considers how Henry Fielding's political involvement in affairs concerning the British state influenced his literary ambition and practise in the works he published in the final decade of his life (1745-54). How does Fielding's sense of patriotic duty as defender of the British nation find expression in the three prose narratives written in this period, Tom Jones, Amelia, and The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon ? How did the storyteller in Fielding change as his involvement in the affair of the state became deeper? Questions such as these are the prime mover of my thesis, the central aim of which is to elucidate the complicated relationship between the challenging storyteller and the patriotic defender as dramatized in his later narrative texts from four political aspects.;The first chapter examines how considerably Fielding's allegiance to the Hanoverian monarchy affected two of his literary creations in the final decade of his life. It compares the author's two different images of ideal kingship, the one expressed in Tom Jones and the other in his short history of English literature (1752). Chapter 2 discusses in full detail Fielding's political stance toward the formation of the nation-state in Great Britain. It discovers a clue to reassessing the value of Fielding's much-slighted novel, Amelia, in its problematic ending, which affords the hero a paradise in a heroic life as a patriot but in retirement from any kind of involvement in the affair of the state. Chapter 3 considers how Fielding, both as magistrate and novelist, observes the power of public opinion in his various kinds of writings, from the most canonical Tom Jones to the less canonical pamphlet, A Clear State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning in 1753. The final chapter examines how hard the dying Fielding managed to settle the conflict between the patriotic defender and the storyteller in his posthumously published travelogue. The writing of this travelogue served for the diseased author as a place in which he could fulfil those two eager desires to the full: the desire to defend his country, and the desire to develop his narrative skill.