Honest sins: Georgian libertinism and the plays and novels of Henry Fielding

Libertinism is a philosophical and social discourse often referred to by students of the eighteenth century, but it is often mistakenly assumed to have disappeared or to have been subsumed by the age of sensibility after 1700. This thesis shows that English libertinism continues to thrive in both society and literature after the Restoration, though it functions in a somewhat different form, mediated by the sentimentalism of the early Hanoverian period. Henry Fielding followed the tenets of libertinism in his youth, and his plays and novels both record and contibute to the changes in libertinism from its Restoration manifestation to the Georgian embodiment in what he calls the "good-natured libertine.".;The first chapter of this dissertation offers an overview of critical discussions of eighteenth-century libertinism and develops the concept of a revisionist Georgian libertinism. Chapter two examines five of Fielding's plays in the context of this version of libertinism: Love in Several Masques (1728), The Modern Husband (1732), The Old Debauchees (1732), The Covent Garden Tragedy (1732), and Pasquin (1736). The third chapter considers Shamela (1741) and Joseph Andrews (1742) and the process of the subversion and subsequent reformation of social constructs of virtue. Chapter four examines Jonathan Wild (1743/1754) and the problem of libertinism and the anti-hero, and chapter five follows the characters of Tom Jones (1749) on the road to the archetypal good-natured Georgian libertine. The final chapter concerns Amelia (1751) and Fielding's consideration of the function of Georgian libertinism in the context of maturity and marriage.;This dissertation demonstrates that Fielding is actively engaged with the shifting discourse of libertinism, and its consistence presence in his works demonstrates the need to re-examine libertinism and its role in the social and literary history of eighteenth-century England.