Where is the English scout king fielding buried. Biographies, stories, facts, photos

FILDING, HENRY(Fielding, Henry) (1707-1754), English novelist and playwright, publicist. Born April 22, 1707, presumably in Sharpem Park (Somersetshire). His father was a well-born nobleman, served in the army, in 1711 he retired with the rank of general. Until the age of twelve, Henry mostly lived in East Stour, Dorsetshire, the wealthy estate of his maternal grandfather, a member of the Court of the Queen's Bench. He studied at Eton (1719-1725) and Leiden University (1728-1730).

Fielding's first publication was a satirical poem Masquerade, 1728); it was soon followed by a sitcom Love under different masks (Love in several masques). In 1730 he published four plays, among them the Irocomic The tragedy of tragedies, or life and death the great Boy with the Finger (The Tragedy of Tragedies, or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great), the most popular of his plays. In 1731 he delivered Welsh Opera (The welsh opera), which contained attacks on the first minister, R. Walpole. The wounded prime minister managed to get the comedy banned, but Fielding did not abandon political satire. Among the works of this kind are especially noteworthy Pasquin. Comedy satire on the present (Pasquin; A Dramatick Satire on the Times) (1736) and Historical calendar for 1736 (The Historical Register for 1736, 1737). These and other similar plays led Walpole to pass legislation in 1737 establishing theater censorship.

Excommunicated from the theater, having a dependent wife Charlotte Craidock (they married in 1734), and two daughters, in 1737 Fielding began to study law, and in 1740 he was admitted to practice. On November 15, 1739, Fielding began publishing The Champion, or The British Mercury, a journal associated with the parliamentary opposition, but literally close to The Tatler. The "fighter" was at enmity with Walpole, but avoided the overt political thrust inherent in other Fielding magazines, the anti-Stewart "True Patriot", published from November 5, 1745 to June 17, 1746, and "Jacobite" s Journal "), published from December 5, 1747 to November 5, 1748, which were caused by the uprising of 1745-1746 in support of the Stuarts and its consequences, but are interesting today for their essays and literary criticism.

As a reward for the publication of these magazines and other political merits, Fielding was appointed Justice of the Peace at Westminster in 1747 and later at Middlesex. He distinguished himself in this field, effectively creating the London police, and in 1749-1753 wrote several pamphlets on social topics. In his latest novel Amelia Fielding relied heavily on his own judicial experience. From January 4 to November 25, 1752 published his least party "Covent-Garden Journal" ("The Covent-Garden Journal").

Fielding's plays have now lost their popularity, and his fame is based mainly on novels. The story of Joseph Endrus and his friend Abraham Adams (The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Adams, 1742), The story of the life and death of Jonathan Wilde The great (The History of the Life and Death of Jonathan Wilde the Great, 1743), The Tom Jones Story, foundling (The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, 1749) and Amelia (Amelia, 1751). To create Joseph Endrus, the brightest of these works, the writer was prompted by the novel by S. Richardson Pamela, or Rewarded Virtue... Even before Fielding sharply ridiculed Pamela and at the same time Apology for your own life actor and poet-laureate K. Sieber in a short humoresque Apology for the life of Mrs. Shamela Endrus (An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela andrews), but in Joseph Endrus satire is more good-natured and less harsh. The novel attracts with humor and vividly portrayed characters, especially the pedantic and simple-minded Pastor Adams. Fielding called this work a comic adventure novel or a comic epic in prose, reproducing the manner Don Quixote Cervantes. Parodying Pamela Richardson, Fielding forced the unusually chaste footman Joseph to reject the lustful Lady Booby and flee to the honest servant Fanny Goodwill. This novel of the "high road" ends with the disclosure of family secrets and the marriage of Joseph and Fanny.

Jonathan Wilde, a flamboyant satire on Walpole, allegedly started after the Censorship Act of 1737 and hastily completed to be included in the collection Mixture (Miscellanies, 1743). The collection also includes an unfinished and uneven allegorical review Journey to the afterlife peace and stuff (Journey from This World to the Next), humorous poems and other light little things, but in addition - serious essays about the art of conversation, about human characters and misfortunes.

Tom Jones- Fielding's acclaimed masterpiece. A novelist, Fielding argues, needs ingenuity and prudence, a good education, a wide social circle, and humanity. Detailed, but essentially simple plot Tom Jones- one of the most skilled in fiction. Squire Allworthy, having found a foundling in the house, raises the boy along with Blifil, the son of his sister Bridget. The foundling is unreasonable, but kindhearted and becomes everyone's favorite. Tom and Sophia Western, who lives next door, love each other, the envious Blifil slanders Allworthy about the foundling, and he is expelled. Sophia follows him - partly to get rid of Blifil, however, having learned about Tom's immodesty in amorous affairs, disowns him. Tom's circumstances are getting worse, he is close to death, but then Blifil's baseness and Tom's impeccable decency become known. It is also revealed that he is the son of Bridget, and with the blessing of Allworthy and Squire Western, he marries Sophia.

The work overload worsened his health. In 1744 he experienced a tragedy: his daughter and wife died. In 1747 Fielding remarried. In 1754, after a grueling winter spent in court, in the fight against a wave of murders, he was forced to leave for treatment in Portugal, where he died on October 8, 1754. In Travel diary to Lisbon (Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, 1755), with characteristic wit and liveliness of thought, the last weeks of his life are described.

". One of the founders of the realistic novel.

In addition to his literary achievements, Fielding occupies a significant place in the history of law enforcement: using his powers as a judge, he, along with his brother John (English)Russian created what many call the first police force in London, the Bow Street Snoop Society (English)Russian.

Biography

Fielding received his secondary education at Eton (1719-1725), one of the most aristocratic schools in England. At Eton, he developed a strong friendship with William Pitt Sr. His younger sister, Sarah, has also become a successful writer. After a love affair with a young woman that turned into legal problems for him, Fielding went to London, where his literary career began. In 1728 he went to Leiden to study classical art and law at the university. But, apparently, the lack of sufficient material resources forced him to refuse to graduate from Leiden University (1728-1730), where he studied for about two years, and forced him to return to London. Returning to London in search of a livelihood, young Fielding turned to dramatic work. He began writing for the theater, some of his work being heavily criticized by the government under the direction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Robert Walpole.

Theater Censorship Act 1737 is said to be a direct result of his activities. Specifically, the play that led to the Theater Censorship Act was "Golden rump" (The golden rump), but Fielding's satire set the tone. Whereas theater censorship law was argued, satire on political topics was virtually impossible and the playwrights whose works were staged were under suspicion. For this reason, Fielding left the theater and continued his career in the field of law and, in order to support his wife Charlotte Cradock and two children, in 1737 Fielding entered a student at Temple and in 1740 received the title of lawyer. The beginning of his studies in journalism belongs to the same period.

Fielding and his family often went through periods of poverty, but he was also helped Ralph Allen, philanthropist and founder of England's first private postal service, who later served as the prototype for Squire Allworthy in the novel “ Tom Jones". After Fielding's death, Allen financially supported and educated his children.

Fielding never stopped writing satire, both political and contemporary art and literature. His Tragedy of tragedies Thumb Boy (for which William Hogarth designed the frontispiece) had, for example, a pretty good success for a printed play. He also appeared in daily journals. Fielding wrote for the Tory periodicals, usually under the pseudonym "Captain Hercules Vinegar" ( Captain hercules vinegar). In the late 1730s and early 1740s, Fielding continued to expound his liberal and anti-Jacobite views in satirical articles. Almost by accident, having envied the success of Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela, Fielding began writing novels in 1741 and his first major success was Chamela, an anonymous parody of Samuel Richardson's melodramatic novel. This satire follows the standard of the famous "conservative" satirists of the previous generation (in particular, Jonathan Swift and John Gaye).

This was followed by the novel “ Joseph Andrews"(1742), an original work supposedly about Pamela's brother, Joseph. Although intended as a parody, the work has evolved into a full-fledged novel and is considered a kind of starting point, Fielding's debut as a serious novelist. In 1743, Fielding published the novel in the third collection Miscellanies... It was a novel " The life story of the late Jonathan Wilde the Great". This novel is sometimes considered his first novel because he almost certainly started writing it before he wrote the novels. " Shamela" and " Joseph Andrews". It is a satire on Walpole that draws a parallel between Walpole and Jonathan Wald, notorious gang leader and outlaw. He indirectly compares the Whig party in Parliament to a gang of thieves led by Walpole, whose constant desire to become the "Great Man" (a common epithet for Walpole) must come to a head only in the antithesis of greatness: when he is hanged.

His anonymously published in 1746 " Effeminate spouse» ( The female husband) is a fictional account of a famous transvestite woman convicted of tricking another woman into marrying. Despite the fact that this topic occupies an insignificant place in Fielding's creative legacy, it is consistent with his constant interest in the topic of fraud, deception, and pretense. Fielding's Best Work, Tom Jones() is an elaborately crafted roguish novel, intricately and amusingly about how the foundling succeeded. Fielding's wife, Charlotte, who served as the prototype for the characters in Tom Jones and Amelia, died in 1744. Three years later, Fielding, ignoring public opinion, married Charlotte's former maid, Mary, who was pregnant.

Despite this, his consistent anti-Jacobism and support for the Anglican Church contributed to the fact that a year later Fielding was appointed Chief Justice of London, and his literary career took off. Teaming up with his younger brother John, he helped form the Bow Street Runners in 1749, referred to by many as London's first police force. According to the historian M. Trevelyan, they were the best judges in London in the eighteenth century, and did much to improve the judicial system and prison conditions. Fielding's influential pamphlets and requests included a proposal to abolish the public hanging. This does not mean, however, that Fielding opposed the death penalty as such, as evidenced, for example, by his presidency of the court in 1751, at the hearing of the famous criminal. James Field, he was convicted of robbery and sentenced to the gallows. Despite being blind, John Fielding succeeded his older brother as Chief Justice and became known as the "Blind Beak" of Bow Street for his ability to independently recognize criminals from their voices. In January 1752, Henry Fielding took up periodicals — a bi-weekly magazine called Covent Garden ", Which he published under the pseudonym" Sir Alexander Drowcansir, CST. UK censor »Until November of the same year. In this magazine, Fielding challenged the "Army of Grub Street" and contemporary daily periodical writers. This conflict eventually led to the Paper War of 1752-1753 ( Paper War of 1752-1753 ).

Fielding's fervent commitment as a great humanist to the cause of justice (in particular, he supported Elizabeth Canning) coincided with the rapid deterioration of his health, and in 1754 he left for Portugal for medical treatment. Gout, asthma and other ailments have led to the need to use crutches. Henry Fielding died in Lisbon two months later. His grave is located in the city's English cemetery (Cimeterio Ingles). The last months of Fielding's life are described by him in his "Diary of a trip to Lisbon" - "Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon", .

Plays

Novels

Fielding's wide literary fame is based not on his drama and publicism, but solely on his three big novels: "The Adventure Story of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Abraham Adams" ( „The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams “,), "The Story of Tom Jones, Foundling" ( "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling",) and "Emilia" ("Amelia",), to which his satirical story "The Life of Jonathan Wilde the Great" ( „The life of Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great “, included in the collection "Miscellanies", published by Fielding c).

Joseph Andrews was inspired by Richardson's Pamela. By making the hero of his novel the imaginary brother Pamela, who, like herself, is in the service and subject to the same encroachments on his virtue, Fielding venomously parodies Richardson's sentimental didactic style. However, the literary and historical significance of Joseph Andrews goes far beyond mere parody. Already in this novel, written almost impromptu, Fielding realizes and proclaims himself the creator of a new literary genre - “a comic epic in prose, which differs from comedy in the same way that a serious epic differs from tragedy in that its action is broader and more detailed, that it covers much more numerous and varied characters. " This new genre - a realist epic of bourgeois society - is contrasted to them in equal measure with the baroque pastoral-historical novel of the 17th century and the sentimental family novel of the Richardson school.

The pioneering principles already outlined in Joseph Andrews have been extensively expressed in Fielding's masterpiece Tom Jones. The introductory theoretical and aesthetic chapters of Tom Jones are a veritable manifesto of enlightenment aesthetics. The artist's task is to draw his material from the “great book of Nature”; true imitation of nature is the only source of aesthetic pleasure. The imagination of a writer must be strictly confined within the boundaries of the possible; "With extremely rare exceptions, the highest subject for the pen ... of historians and poets is a man" (Tom Jones, Book VIII, 1). The educational and journalistic significance of literature — from Fielding’s point of view — is enormous; the fight against social abuse, human vices and hypocrisy is a task that Fielding himself set himself in every novel. Laughter, from his point of view, is one of the most powerful means of the artist in this struggle.

The problem of human nature - the main problem for the entire enlightenment of the 18th century - occupies a central place in Fielding's work, especially in "Tom Jones", filling his novels with new moral and philosophical content. “Human nature itself is far from bad,” says one of Fielding's characters. - Bad upbringing, bad habits and customs corrupt our nature and direct it to vice. For the depravity of our world, its rulers are responsible, including, I fear, the clergy ”(“ Emilia ”, book IX, 5). The final pages of Tom Jones's conversation with the Mountain Hermit (Tom Jones, Book VIII, 15) breathe the same enlightenment optimism, where Tom Jones, with all the fervor of his youth, opposes the misanthropy of his master with a deeply optimistic belief in human dignity.

However, according to Fielding, virtue itself is as insufficient as reason, divorced from virtue. The victory of Tom Jones over Blyfill is revealed not only as the victory of abstract Virtue over abstract Vice, but also as a victory of the owner of a good heart (even if he broke all the rules of bourgeois morality) over the one-sidedness of bourgeois prudence. This appeal from reason to feeling, from prudence to a good heart in Fielding's work already makes one anticipate the forthcoming criticism of bourgeois society in the works of sentimentalists.

Tom Jones marks the pinnacle of Fielding's creativity. The last period of Fielding's work that followed, in the center of which is Emilia, is characterized by a weakening of the writer's realistic talent and his satirical acuteness.

If Tom Jones contained only the known potential for the transition to sentimentalism, then Emilia, Fielding's last novel, shows that the shift in this direction has already actually been realized in his work. Despite the presence of a number of vivid satirical images (Judge Thrusher, Mrs. Allison, anonymous "noble lord" and others), the overall flavor of the book differs sharply from Fielding's previous novels. The dedication of Emilia to Allen speaks of the book's accusatory objectives:

This book is sincerely intended to help defend virtue and expose some of the most blatant abuses currently defiling both public and private life in our country.

However, they are achieved, in contrast to "Joseph Andrews" or "Tom Jones", not so much by means of realistic satire as by means of sentimental-moralistic didactics. The image of the resonant pastor Harrison (to a certain extent analogous to Allworthy's "Tom Jones") is highlighted in the novel, accordingly lowering the proportion of the image of Captain Buzz - the weak epigone of Tom Jones. Typical for a new stage in Fielding's work is the final "appeal" of Buzs, who allowed himself to doubt the omnipotence of Providence (after reading Barrow's sermons in the house of arrest). The very structure of the novel differs substantially from Fielding's previous books; Unlike Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, whose detailed composition gave the artist the opportunity to embrace reality, the action of Emilia is centered around the narrow family world of Emilia. Having started his creative career with a parody of Richardson (Joseph Andrews), Fielding in Emilia noticeably approaches him. Characteristically, while “Joseph Andrews” and “Tom Jones” were condemned for “rudeness” and “immorality,” “Emilia” Fielding had to defend against opposite accusations of excessive sentimentality and flatness (see Covent-Garden Journal , 1752).

The article on "Reading" ("Covent-Carden Journal", 4 / II 1752), written after the appearance of "Emilia", confirms the change in the philosophical and aesthetic principles of F.; in this article he disavows Aristophanes and Rabelais, whom he had recently admired in Tom Jones, and attempts to reconcile with Richardson, praising him as "the witty author of Clarissa."

Literary style

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.

Excerpt from Fielding, Henry

- And the military people told me, - said Pierre, - that in the city it is impossible to fight in any way and that the position ...
“Well, yes, that's what we're talking about,” said the first official.
- And what does it mean: my eye hurt, and now I look at both? - said Pierre.
“The count had barley,” said the adjutant, smiling, “and he was very worried when I told him that people came to ask what was the matter with him. And what, count, - said the adjutant suddenly, turning to Pierre with a smile, - have we heard that you have family troubles? As if a countess, your wife ...
“I haven't heard anything,” Pierre said indifferently. - What did you hear?
- No, you know, they often make up. I say I heard.
- What did you hear?
“Yes, they say,” said the adjutant again with the same smile, “that the Countess, your wife, is going abroad. Probably nonsense ...
“Maybe,” said Pierre, absentmindedly looking around him. - And who is this? He asked, pointing to a short old man in a clean blue chuyka, with a big beard as white as snow, the same eyebrows and a ruddy face.
- It? This is the only merchant, that is, he is an innkeeper, Vereshchagin. Have you heard maybe this story about the proclamation?
- Oh, so this is Vereshchagin! - said Pierre, peering into the firm and calm face of the old merchant and looking for an expression of treason in it.
- It's not him. This is the father of the one who wrote the proclamation, said the adjutant. - That young man is sitting in a pit, and it seems to him that it will be bad.
One old man, in a star, and another - a German official, with a cross around his neck, approached the conversation.
“You see,” said the adjutant, “this is a complicated story. Then, about two months ago, this proclamation appeared. The count was told. He ordered an investigation. Here he was looking for Gavrilo Ivanovich, this proclamation was in exactly sixty-three hands. He will come to one: who do you have from? - From that then. He goes to the one: who are you from? and so on. We got to Vereshchagin ... a half-educated merchant, you know, a merchant, my dear, ”said the adjutant, smiling. - They ask him: who do you get it from? And the main thing is that we know from whom he gets it. He has no one else to have from, as from the director's mail. But evidently there was a strike between them. He says: from no one, I composed it myself. And they threatened and asked, stood on that: he wrote it himself. And so it was reported to the count. The Count ordered to summon him. "Who did you get the proclamation from?" - "I composed it myself." Well, you know the Count! The adjutant said with a proud and cheerful smile. - He flared up terribly, and think: such impudence, lies and stubbornness! ..
- A! The count needed him to point to Klyucharyov, I understand! - said Pierre.
“It’s not necessary at all,” the adjutant said in dismay. - Klyucharyov had sins even without that, for which he was exiled. But the fact is that the count was very indignant. “How could you compose? - says the count. I took this Hamburg newspaper from the table. - There she is. You didn’t compose, but translated, and translated it badly, because you don’t know French, you fool ”. What do you think? "No, he says, I have not read any newspapers, I have composed." “If so, then you are a traitor, and I will bring you to justice, and you will be hanged. Tell me, from whom did you get it? " - "I have not seen any newspapers, but I have composed." And so it remained. The count also called on his father: he stands his ground. And they were put on trial, and sentenced, it seems, to hard labor. Now the father has come to ask for him. But you cheesy boy! You know, a kind of merchant's son, a dandy, a seducer, he listened to lectures somewhere and really thinks that the devil is not his brother. What a young fellow! His father has an inn here near the Stone Bridge, so in the inn, you know, there is a large image of the Almighty God and a scepter is presented in one hand, a state in the other; so he took this image home for a few days and what did he do! Found a scoundrel painter ...

In the middle of this new story, Pierre was summoned to the commander-in-chief.
Pierre entered Count Rostopchin's office. Rostopchin, grimacing, rubbed his forehead and eyes with his hand, while Pierre entered. The short man said something, and as soon as Pierre entered, he fell silent and left.
- A! hello, great warrior, - said Rostopchin as soon as this man came out. - Heard about your prouesses [glorious deeds]! But that's not the point. Mon cher, entre nous, [Between us, my dear,] are you a freemason? - said Count Rostopchin in a stern tone, as if there was something wrong in this, but that he intended to forgive. Pierre was silent. - Mon cher, je suis bien informe, [I, my dear, know everything well,] but I know that there are Freemasons and Freemasons, and I hope that you do not belong to those who, under the guise of saving the human race, want to destroy Russia.
- Yes, I am a Mason, - Pierre answered.
- Well, you see, my dear. You, I think, are not unaware that Messrs. Speransky and Magnitsky have been sent where they should be; the same was done with Mr. Klyucharyov, the same with others, who, under the guise of building the temple of Solomon, tried to destroy the temple of their fatherland. You can understand that there are reasons for this and that I could not have sent the local director of the post if he was not a mischievous person. Now I know that you sent him yours. a carriage for getting out of town and even that you took papers from him for storage. I love you and do not wish you any harm, and as you are twice my age, then I, as a father, advise you to stop all intercourse with such people and leave here yourself as soon as possible.
- But what, Count, is Klyucharev's fault? Pierre asked.
“It’s my business to know and not yours to ask me,” Rostopchin cried out.
- If he is accused of spreading Napoleon's proclamations, then this has not been proven, - said Pierre (without looking at Rostopchin), - and Vereshchagin ...
- Nous y voila, [So it is,] - suddenly frowning, interrupting Pierre, Rostopchin screamed even louder than before. “Vereshchagin is a traitor and a traitor who will receive a well-deserved execution,” Rostopchin said with that fervor of anger with which people speak when remembering an insult. “But I did not summon you to discuss my affairs, but to give you advice or an order, if you wish. I ask you to stop communicating with gentlemen like Klyucharyov and leave here. And I will knock out the nonsense, whoever she is. - And, probably, realizing that he seemed to be shouting at Bezukhov, who was not guilty of anything yet, he added, taking Pierre's hand in a friendly manner: - Nous sommes a la veille d "un desastre publique, et je n" ai pas le temps de dire des gentillesses a tous ceux qui ont affaire a moi. Sometimes my head is spinning! Eh! bien, mon cher, qu "est ce que vous faites, vous personnellement? [We are on the eve of a common disaster, and I have no time to be nice to everyone with whom I have business. So, my dear, what are you doing, you personally?]
- Mais rien, [Yes, nothing,] - Pierre answered, still not raising his eyes and not changing the expression of his thoughtful face.
The Count frowned.
- Un conseil d "ami, mon cher. Decampez et au plutot, c" est tout ce que je vous dis. A bon entendeur salut! Goodbye my dear. Oh yes, ”he shouted at him from the door,“ is it true that the Countess fell into the clutches of des saints peres de la Societe de Jesus? [Friendly advice. Get out soon, I'll tell you what. Blessed is he who knows how to obey! .. the holy fathers of the Society of Jesus?]
Pierre did not answer and, frowning and angry, as he had never been seen, left Rostopchin.

By the time he arrived home, it was already getting dark. Eight different people visited him that evening. The secretary of the committee, the colonel of his battalion, the manager, the butler, and various petitioners. Everyone had things to do with Pierre, which he had to resolve. Pierre did not understand anything, was not interested in these matters and gave only such answers to all questions that would free him from these people. Finally, alone, he opened and read his wife's letter.
“They are soldiers on a battery, Prince Andrew has been killed ... an old man ... Simplicity is obedience to God. You need to suffer ... the meaning of everything ... you need to match ... your wife is getting married ... You need to forget and understand ... ”And he, going up to the bed, without undressing, fell on her and immediately fell asleep.
When he woke up the next morning, the butler came to report that a specially dispatched police official had come from Count Rostopchin to find out if Count Bezukhov had left or was leaving.
Ten different people who had business with Pierre were waiting for him in the drawing-room. Pierre dressed hastily, and instead of going to those who were waiting for him, he went to the back porch and from there went out through the gate.
From then until the end of the Moscow devastation, none of the Bezukhovs' household, despite all the searches, saw Pierre again and did not know where he was.

The Rostovs remained in the city until September 1, that is, until the eve of the enemy's entry into Moscow.
After Petya entered the Obolensky Cossack regiment and left for Bila Tserkva, where this regiment was being formed, fear found the countess. The thought that both of her sons are at war, that both of them have left under her wing, that today or tomorrow each of them, and maybe both together, like three sons of one of her acquaintances, may be killed, in the first once now, this summer, it occurred to her with cruel clarity. She tried to get Nikolai to her place, she wanted to go to Petya herself, to find him somewhere in Petersburg, but both turned out to be impossible. Petya could not be returned otherwise than together with the regiment or by transferring to another active regiment. Nicholas was somewhere in the army and after his last letter, in which he described in detail his meeting with Princess Marya, did not give a word about himself. The countess did not sleep at night, and when she fell asleep, she saw killed sons in her dreams. After much advice and negotiations, the count finally came up with a means to calm the countess. He transferred Petya from Obolensky's regiment to Bezukhov's regiment, which was being formed near Moscow. Although Petya remained in military service, during this transfer the Countess had the consolation of seeing at least one son under her wing and hoped to arrange her Petya so that he would not let him out anymore and always write to such places of service where he could not get into battle. While Nicolas alone was in danger, it seemed to the countess (and she even repented of it) that she loved the elder more than all the other children; but when the younger, mischievous, badly studied, breaking everything in the house and annoying Petya, this snub-nosed Petya, with his cheerful black eyes, fresh blush and a little fluff on his cheeks, got there, to these big, terrible, cruel men who there is something fighting and something in this they find joyful - then it seemed to the mother that she loved him more, much more than all her children. The closer the time came when the expected Petya was to return to Moscow, the more the countess's anxiety increased. She already thought that she would never wait for this happiness. The presence of not only Sonya, but also her beloved Natasha, even her husband, irritated the countess. "What do I care about them, I don't need anyone but Petya!" She thought.
In late August, the Rostovs received a second letter from Nikolai. He wrote from the Voronezh province, where he was sent for the horses. This letter did not calm the countess. Knowing one son was out of danger, she became even more worried about Petya.
Despite the fact that already on the 20th of August, almost all of the Rostovs' acquaintances left Moscow, despite the fact that everyone tried to persuade the Countess to leave as soon as possible, she did not want to hear anything about leaving until her treasure returned, adored Peter. Petya arrived on August 28. The painfully passionate tenderness with which his mother greeted him did not like the sixteen-year-old officer. Despite the fact that his mother concealed from him her intention not to let him out from under her wing now, Petya understood her plans and, instinctively fearing that he would not be flattering with his mother, would not be fucked up (so he thought to himself), he treated himself coldly with her, avoided her, and during his stay in Moscow he exclusively adhered to Natasha's company, for whom he always had a special, almost in love, fraternal tenderness.
By the count's usual carelessness, on August 28, nothing was yet ready for departure, and the carts expected from Ryazan and Moscow villages to lift all the property from the house came only on the 30th.
From 28 to 31 August, all of Moscow was in trouble and movement. Every day, thousands of wounded in the Battle of Borodino were brought into the Dorogomilovskaya outpost and transported across Moscow, and thousands of carts, with residents and property, went to other outposts. Despite the posters of Rostopchin, or independently of them, or as a result of them, the most contradictory and strange news was broadcast throughout the city. Who said that no one was ordered to leave; who, on the contrary, said that they had raised all the icons from the churches and that they were all expelled by force; who said that there was still a battle after Borodinsky, in which the French were defeated; who said, on the contrary, that the entire Russian army was destroyed; who spoke about the Moscow militia, which will go with the clergy in front of the Three Mountains; who quietly told that Augustine was not allowed to leave, that traitors were caught, that the peasants were rebelling and robbing those who were leaving, etc., etc. and those who remained (despite the fact that there was still no council in Fili, at which it was decided to leave Moscow), everyone felt, although they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly be surrendered and that it was necessary to get out as soon as possible and save your property. It was felt that everything should suddenly burst and change, but until the 1st, nothing had changed yet. Just as a criminal, who is being led to execution, knows that he is about to die, but still looks around him and straightens a badly worn hat, so Moscow involuntarily continued its normal life, although it knew that the time of death was near, when everyone would be torn apart. those conditional relationships of life to which they are accustomed to submit.
During these three days, which preceded the capture of Moscow, the entire Rostov family was in various everyday worries. The head of the family, Count Ilya Andreevich, incessantly traveled around the city, collecting rumors from all sides, and at home made general superficial and hasty orders about preparations for departure.
The Countess watched the cleaning of things, was unhappy with everything and followed Petya, who was constantly running away from her, jealous of Natasha, with whom he spent all the time. Sonya alone was in charge of the practical side of the matter: packing things. But Sonya has been especially sad and silent all this lately. Nicolas's letter, in which he mentioned Princess Marya, provoked in her presence the countess's joyful reflections about how she saw the providence of God in Princess Marya's meeting with Nicolas.
“I was never happy then,” said the countess, “when Bolkonsky was Natasha’s fiancé, and I always wished, and I have a presentiment that Nikolinka would marry the princess. And how good it would be!
Sonya felt that it was true, that the only way to improve the Rostovs' affairs was to marry a rich woman, and that the princess was a good match. But it was very bitter for her. Despite her grief, or perhaps precisely because of her grief, she took upon herself all the difficult worries of making orders for cleaning and packing things, and was busy for days. The Count and Countess turned to her when they needed to order something. Petya and Natasha, on the contrary, not only did not help their parents, but for the most part bored and disturbed everyone in the house. And the whole day they were almost audible in the house of their running, screaming and unreasonable laughter. They laughed and rejoiced not at all because there was a reason for their laughter; but in their souls it was joyful and cheerful, and therefore everything that happened was for them the cause of joy and laughter. Petya was happy because, having left home as a boy, he returned (as everyone told him) a good man; it was fun because he was at home, because he was from Belaya Tserkov, where it was not soon possible to get into a battle, he got to Moscow, where one of these days they would fight; and most importantly, it was cheerful because Natasha, to whose mood he always obeyed, was cheerful. Natasha was cheerful because she had been sad for too long, and now nothing reminded her of the reason for her sadness, and she was healthy. She was also cheerful because there was a person who admired her (the admiration of others was the ointment of the wheels, which was necessary for her car to move completely freely), and Petya admired her. Most importantly, they were cheerful because the war was near Moscow, that they would fight at the outpost, that they would distribute weapons, that everyone was running, leaving somewhere, that something extraordinary was happening, which was always joyful for a person, especially for a young person.

On the 31st of August, Saturday, everything in the Rostovs' house seemed to be turned upside down. All doors were opened, all furniture was taken out or rearranged, mirrors, paintings were removed. The rooms were filled with chests, hay, wrapping paper, and ropes. The peasants and courtyards, who were carrying things out, walked with heavy steps on the parquet. In the courtyard were crowded peasant carts, some already packed on horseback and tied up, some still empty.
The voices and footsteps of the huge courtyard and the peasants who had arrived with carts sounded, echoing, in the courtyard and in the house. The count left somewhere in the morning. The Countess, who had a headache from the hustle and bustle, was lying in the new couch with vinegar bandages on her head. Petya was not at home (he went to a friend with whom he intended to go from the militia to the active army). Sonya was present in the hall while the crystal and porcelain were being laid. Natasha sat in her ruined room on the floor, between the scattered dresses, ribbons, scarves, and, motionlessly looking at the floor, held in her hands an old ball gown, the very (already old fashion) dress in which she was for the first time in St. ball.
Natasha was ashamed not to do anything in the house, while everyone was so busy, and several times in the morning she tried to get down to business; but her soul was not in this business; but she could not and did not know how to do something not with all her heart, not with all her strength. She stood over Sonya while packing the porcelain, wanted to help, but immediately left it and went to her place to pack her things. At first she was amused by the fact that she handed out her dresses and ribbons to the maids, but then, when the rest still had to be packed, it seemed boring to her.
- Dunyasha, are you going to bed, my dear? Yes? Yes?
And when Dunyasha willingly promised to do everything to her, Natasha sat down on the floor, picked up an old ball gown and thought at all about what should have occupied her now. From the reverie in which Natasha was, she brought out the talk of the girls in the next maiden's room and the sounds of their hasty steps from the maiden's to the back porch. Natasha got up and looked out the window. A huge train of wounded stopped in the street.
Girls, footmen, housekeeper, nanny, cook, coachmen, posters, cooks stood at the gate, looking at the wounded.
Natasha, throwing a white handkerchief over her hair and holding it by the ends with both hands, went out into the street.
The former housekeeper, the old woman Mavra Kuzminishna, separated from the crowd standing at the gate, and, going up to the cart with the matted wagon, talked to the pale young officer who was lying in this cart. Natasha moved a few steps away and timidly stopped, continuing to hold her handkerchief and listening to what the housekeeper was saying.
- Well, you, then, have no one in Moscow? - said Mavra Kuzminishna. - You would be calmer where in the apartment ... If only to us. The gentlemen are leaving.
“I don’t know if they will,” the officer said in a weak voice. - There is the chief ... ask, - and he pointed to the fat major, who was returning back down the street along a row of carts.
Natasha looked with frightened eyes into the face of the wounded officer and immediately went to meet the major.
- Can the wounded stay in our house? She asked.
The major put his hand to the visor with a smile.
- Who do you want, Mamsel? He said, narrowing his eyes and smiling.
Natasha calmly repeated her question, and her face and her whole manner, despite the fact that she continued to hold her handkerchief by the ends, were so serious that the major stopped smiling and, at first thinking, as if asking herself to what extent this was possible, answered her in the affirmative.
“Oh, yes, why, you can,” he said.
Natasha slightly bowed her head and with quick steps returned to Mavra Kuzminishna, who was standing above the officer and talking to him with plaintive sympathy.
- You can, he said, you can! - Natasha said in a whisper.
The officer in the wagon turned into the Rostovs' courtyard, and dozens of carts with the wounded began, at the invitation of city residents, to turn into the courtyards and drive up to the entrances of the houses of Povarskaya Street. Natasha, apparently, recovered from these, outside the usual conditions of life, relations with new people. She, together with Mavra Kuzminishna, tried to turn as many wounded as possible into her yard.
“I still have to report it to my dad,” said Mavra Kuzminishna.
- Nothing, nothing, isn't it all the same! For one day we will move into the living room. You can give all of our half to them.
- Well, you, young lady, will come up with it! Yes, even in the outhouse, in bachelor, to the nanny, and then you have to ask.
- Well, I'll ask.
Natasha ran into the house and tiptoed into the half-open door of the sofa, from which smelled of vinegar and Hoffman drops.
- Are you sleeping, Mom?
- Oh, what a dream! - said, waking up, the countess who had just dozed off.
“Mom, darling,” Natasha said, kneeling down in front of her mother and putting her face close to hers. - I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I will never, I woke you up. Mavra Kuzminishna sent me, here they brought the wounded, officers, will you? And they have nowhere to go; I know that you will allow ... - she spoke quickly, without taking a breath.
- What officers? Whom did they bring? I don’t understand, ”said the Countess.
Natasha laughed, the Countess also smiled faintly.

Fielding's father, an officer who rose to the rank of lieutenant general at the end of his life, belonged to the impoverished junior branch of the earl of Derby. Fielding received his secondary education at Eton, one of the most aristocratic schools in England. But, apparently, the lack of sufficient material resources forced him to refuse to graduate from Leiden University, where he studied for about two years.

Returning to London in search of a livelihood, young Fielding turned to dramatic work. In 1737 Fielding entered the Temple as a student and in 1740 was promoted to lawyer. The beginning of his studies in journalism belongs to the same period. In 1739-1741 he published the magazine "The Champion" - an imitation of Addison's "Spectator", in 1745 he published the anti-Thorian magazine "The True Patriot". In recent years, his "The Jacobite's Journal" (1747-1748) and "The Covent-Garden Journal" (1752) were published.

In late 1748, Fielding was appointed to the post of Justice of the Peace at Westminster, which he retained for the rest of his life. The work associated with this position consumed all of Fielding's forces and finally undermined his health. In 1754, on the advice of doctors, he undertook a sea voyage to Lisbon, where he died shortly after his arrival (these last months of Fielding's life are described by him in his "Journey to Lisbon" - "Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon", 1755, posthumously).

Plays

In 1728, his first comedy "Love in Several Masques" appeared, followed by a number of other plays (in total, between 1728 and 1743, Fielding, alone or in collaboration with other authors, wrote 26 pieces for the stage, not counting the posthumous play The Fathers, or a Good-natured Man, found by Jones in 1776 and published with Garrick's prologue and epilogue in 1798).

Fielding's plays, which were mostly imitations of Congreve and Wicherly, sometimes Moliere ("The Mock Doctor", 1732, "The Miser", 1733), subsequently lost their artistic significance. However, the socially incriminating motives and educational tendencies, already visible in these early works of Fielding, make it possible to foresee the future Fielding the novelist in their author.

Dedicating his Don Qvixote in England (1734) to Chesterfield, Fielding stated that his task was to portray "the calamities brought upon the country by general corruption." The Life and Death of Common Sense, which tells about the struggle of the Common Sense queen with the Priests and the Law, who are seeking her death, is sustained in a completely enlightening spirit - is part of the comedy Pasquin, a Dramatick Satire on the Times “, 1736).

Novels

Fielding's wide literary fame is based not on his drama and publicism, but solely on his three great novels: "The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Abraham Adams" , 1742), "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" (1749) and "Emilia" ("Amelia", 1751), to which his satirical story "The Life of Jonathan Wilde the Great "(" The life of Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great ", included in the collection" Miscellanies ", published by Fielding in 1743.

Joseph Andrews was inspired by Richardson's Pamela. By making the hero of his novel the imaginary brother Pamela, who, like herself, is in the service and subject to the same encroachments on his virtue, Fielding venomously parodies Richardson's sentimental didactic style. However, the literary and historical significance of Joseph Andrews goes far beyond mere parody. Already in this novel, written almost impromptu, Fielding realizes and proclaims himself the creator of a new literary genre - “a comic epic in prose, which differs from comedy in the same way that a serious epic differs from tragedy in that its action is broader and more detailed, that it covers much more numerous and varied characters. " This new genre - a realist epic of bourgeois society - is contrasted to them in equal measure with the baroque pastoral-historical novel of the 17th century and the sentimental family novel of the Richardson school.

The pioneering principles already outlined in Joseph Andrews have been extensively expressed in Fielding's masterpiece Tom Jones. The introductory theoretical and aesthetic chapters of Tom Jones are a veritable manifesto of enlightenment aesthetics. The artist's task is to draw his material from the “great book of Nature”; true imitation of nature is the only source of aesthetic pleasure. The imagination of a writer must be strictly confined within the boundaries of the possible; "With extremely rare exceptions, the highest subject for the pen ... of historians and poets is a man" (Tom Jones, Book VIII, 1). The educational and journalistic significance of literature — from Fielding’s point of view — is enormous; the fight against social abuse, human vices and hypocrisy is a task that Fielding himself set himself in every novel. Laughter, from his point of view, is one of the most powerful means of the artist in this struggle.

The problem of human nature - the main problem for the entire enlightenment of the 18th century - occupies a central place in Fielding's work, especially in "Tom Jones", filling his novels with new moral and philosophical content. “Human nature itself is far from bad,” says one of Fielding's characters. - Bad upbringing, bad habits and customs corrupt our nature and direct it to vice. For the depravity of our world, its rulers are responsible, including, I fear, the clergy ”(“ Emilia ”, book IX, 5). The final pages of Tom Jones's conversation with the Mountain Hermit (Tom Jones, Book VIII, 15) breathe the same enlightenment optimism, where Tom Jones, with all the fervor of his youth, opposes the misanthropy of his master with a deeply optimistic belief in human dignity.

However, according to Fielding, virtue itself is as insufficient as reason, divorced from virtue. The victory of Tom Jones over Blyfill is revealed not only as the victory of abstract Virtue over abstract Vice, but also as a victory of the owner of a good heart (even if he broke all the rules of bourgeois morality) over the one-sidedness of bourgeois prudence. This appeal from reason to feeling, from prudence to a good heart in Fielding's work already makes one anticipate the forthcoming criticism of bourgeois society in the works of sentimentalists.

Tom Jones marks the pinnacle of Fielding's creativity. The last period of Fielding's work that followed, in the center of which is Emilia, is characterized by a weakening of the writer's realistic talent and his satirical acuteness.

If Tom Jones contained only the known potential for the transition to sentimentalism, then Emilia, Fielding's last novel, shows that the shift in this direction has already actually been realized in his work. Despite the presence of a number of vivid satirical images (Judge Thrusher, Mrs. Allison, anonymous "noble lord" and others), the overall flavor of the book differs sharply from Fielding's previous novels. The dedication of Emilia to Allen speaks of the book's accusatory objectives:

This book is sincerely intended to help defend virtue and expose some of the most blatant abuses currently defiling both public and private life in our country.

However, they are achieved, in contrast to "Joseph Andrews" or "Tom Jones", not so much by means of realistic satire as by means of sentimental-moralistic didactics. The image of the resonant pastor Harrison (to a certain extent analogous to Allworthy's "Tom Jones") is highlighted in the novel, accordingly lowering the proportion of the image of Captain Buzz - the weak epigone of Tom Jones. Typical for a new stage in Fielding's work is the final "appeal" of Buzs, who allowed himself to doubt the omnipotence of Providence (after reading Barrow's sermons in the house of arrest). The very structure of the novel differs substantially from Fielding's previous books; Unlike Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, whose detailed composition provided the artist with a wide coverage of reality, the action of Emilia is centered around the narrow family world of Emilia. Having started his creative career with a parody of Richardson (Joseph Andrews), Fielding in Emilia noticeably approaches him. Characteristically, while “Joseph Andrews” and “Tom Jones” were condemned for “rudeness” and “immorality,” “Emilia” Fielding had to defend against opposite accusations of excessive sentimentality and flatness (see Covent-Garden Journal , 1752).

The article on "Reading" ("Covent-Carden Journal", 4 / II 1752), written after the appearance of "Emilia", confirms the change in the philosophical and aesthetic principles of F.; in this article, he disavows Aristophanes and Rabelais, whom he had recently admired in "Tom Jones," and attempts to reconcile with Richardson, praising him as "the witty author of Clarissa."

Meaning

Fielding's "comic epic" had its predecessors in the person of the Spanish rogue novel of the 16th-17th centuries, and in the person of the French "comic novel" of the 17th century. (Sorel, Scarron, Furetier). However, a new subject introduced by them into literature - the life of the plebeian "lower strata" of society - is used by them almost invariably in terms of the grotesque. In Fielding's work, the bourgeois enters literature in the prosaic costume of Mr. Allworthy and Tom Jones, in the usual guise of an ordinary citizen of bourgeois England of the 18th century. It is not for nothing that in the struggle for the dignity of the new bourgeois theme and the new bourgeois "comic-narrative" genre, Fielding, giving a definition of his "comic epic", so persistently delimits it from burlesque and caricature, from everything "absurd and monstrous."

This striving for maximum everyday authenticity was contradictory in its artistic results. While, on the one hand, a step forward towards a more realistic depiction of reality, it at the same time resulted in the inevitable narrowing of the realism of the artists of the 18th century. Suffice it to compare Fielding's work with the works of the great realists of the Renaissance - Shakespeare, Rabelais, who least of all cared about the everyday reliability of their work, who boldly turned to science fiction and burlesque and nevertheless created the broadest realistic generalizations. By the time of Fielding, this era of "titans" who "were anything but bourgeois-limited" (Engels) was entirely in the past. In England, which had already survived the revolutionary battles of Cromwell's "great rebellion" and the inglorious compromise of the "glorious revolution" of 1688, bourgeois narrow-mindedness was already taking over, even where it was about the most advanced and truthful art of the time.

True, in his appeal to experience as the only source of true art, Fielding is infinitely far from the petty empiricism of the epigones of bourgeois literature. In the aesthetic-theoretical chapters of "Tom Jones" Fielding repeatedly appeals to the artist with the demand to abandon the flat photographic depiction of life, insisting that his novel, in contrast to all kinds of empirical "biographies" and "apologies", is a "history" , that is, an artistic generalization of events. However, it is precisely in this maximum generalization of his observations of "human nature", which is a guarantee of the breadth of his realistic outlook, that at the same time his limitedness is most clearly manifested, narrowing the social basis of Fielding's realism. It is precisely in this contradiction that Fielding's inner tragedy lies. Tearing off the masks of lies and hypocrisy, in whatever circles of public life they may meet him (Lady Bellaston, Lord Fellamar in Tom Jones, "Noble Lord" in "Emilia", Lady Booby in "Joseph Andrews", Jonathan Wilde, etc. Fielding contrasts them - as an ideal model - with human nature in general.

"Religious bigotry and the stupidity of the English 'respectable' middle class" (Engels) contributed to the creation in English criticism and in the representation of the wider readership of the "legend" about Fielding, identifying him with his heroes (in particular with Buzs from "Emilia"), transforming Fielding into a moth-like, thoughtless, frivolous artist, and his novels - into purely "entertaining" works. Attempts to restore the true appearance of Fielding and his work were undertaken by some literary scholars of the West.

Henry Fielding is a famous English writer and playwright of the 18th century, known for his worldly humor and satirical skill, as well as the author of the novel "The Story of Tom Jones, Foundling." One of the founders of the realistic novel.

In addition to his literary achievements, Fielding occupies a significant place in the history of law enforcement: using his powers as a judge, he, together with his brother John, created what many call the first police unit in London, the Bow Street Snoopers.

Fielding's father, an officer who rose to the rank of lieutenant general at the end of his life, belonged to the impoverished junior branch of the earl of Derby. Fielding received his secondary education at Eton, one of the most aristocratic schools in England. But, apparently, the lack of sufficient material resources forced him to refuse to graduate from Leiden University, where he studied for about two years.
Returning to London in search of a livelihood, young Fielding turned to dramatic work. In 1737 Fielding entered the Temple as a student and in 1740 was promoted to lawyer. The beginning of his studies in journalism belongs to the same period. In 1739-1741 he published the magazine "The Champion" - an imitation of Addison's "Spectator", in 1745 he published the anti-Thorian magazine "The True Patriot". In recent years, his "The Jacobite's Journal" (1747-1748) and "The Covent-Garden Journal" (1752) were published.
In late 1748, Fielding was appointed to the post of Justice of the Peace at Westminster, which he retained for the rest of his life. The work associated with this position consumed all of Fielding's forces and finally undermined his health. In 1754, on the advice of doctors, he undertook a sea voyage to Lisbon, where he died shortly after his arrival (these last months of Fielding's life are described by him in his "Journey to Lisbon" - "Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon", 1755, posthumously).

In 1728, his first comedy "Love in Several Masques" appeared, followed by a number of other plays (in total, between 1728 and 1743, Fielding, alone or in collaboration with other authors, wrote 26 pieces for the stage, not counting the posthumous play The Fathers, or a Good-natured Man, found by Jones in 1776 and published with Garrick's prologue and epilogue in 1798).
Fielding's plays, which were mostly imitations of Congreve and Wicherly, sometimes Moliere ("The Mock Doctor", 1732, "The Miser", 1733), subsequently lost their artistic significance. However, the socially incriminating motives and educational tendencies, already visible in these early works of Fielding, make it possible to foresee the future Fielding the novelist in their author.
Dedicating his Don Qvixote in England (1734) to Chesterfield, Fielding stated that his task was to portray "the calamities brought upon the country by general corruption." The Life and Death of Common Sense, which tells about the struggle of the Common Sense queen with the Priests and the Law, who are seeking her death, is sustained in a completely enlightening spirit - is part of the comedy Pasquin, a Dramatick Satire on the Times “, 1736).

Fielding's wide literary fame is based not on his drama and publicism, but solely on his three great novels: "The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Abraham Adams" , 1742), "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" (1749) and "Emilia" ("Amelia", 1751), to which his satirical story "The Life of Jonathan Wilde the Great "(" The life of Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great ", included in the collection" Miscellanies ", published by Fielding in 1743.
Joseph Andrews was inspired by Richardson's Pamela. By making the hero of his novel the imaginary brother Pamela, who, like herself, is in the service and subject to the same encroachments on his virtue, Fielding venomously parodies Richardson's sentimental didactic style. However, the literary and historical significance of Joseph Andrews goes far beyond mere parody. Already in this novel, written almost impromptu, Fielding realizes and proclaims himself the creator of a new literary genre - “a comic epic in prose, which differs from comedy in the same way that a serious epic differs from tragedy in that its action is broader and more detailed, that it covers much more numerous and varied characters. " This new genre - a realist epic of bourgeois society - is contrasted to them in equal measure with the baroque pastoral-historical novel of the 17th century and the sentimental family novel of the Richardson school.
The pioneering principles already outlined in Joseph Andrews have been extensively expressed in Fielding's masterpiece Tom Jones. The introductory theoretical and aesthetic chapters of Tom Jones are a veritable manifesto of enlightenment aesthetics. The artist's task is to draw his material from the “great book of Nature”; true imitation of nature is the only source of aesthetic pleasure. The imagination of a writer must be strictly confined within the boundaries of the possible; "With extremely rare exceptions, the highest subject for the pen ... of historians and poets is a man" (Tom Jones, Book VIII, 1). The educational and journalistic significance of literature — from Fielding’s point of view — is enormous; the fight against social abuse, human vices and hypocrisy is a task that Fielding himself set himself in every novel. Laughter, from his point of view, is one of the most powerful means of the artist in this struggle.
The problem of human nature - the main problem for the entire enlightenment of the 18th century - occupies a central place in Fielding's work, especially in "Tom Jones", filling his novels with new moral and philosophical content. “Human nature itself is far from bad,” says one of Fielding's characters. - Bad upbringing, bad habits and customs corrupt our nature and direct it to vice. For the depravity of our world, its rulers are responsible, including, I fear, the clergy ”(“ Emilia ”, book IX, 5). The final pages of Tom Jones's conversation with the Mountain Hermit (Tom Jones, Book VIII, 15) breathe the same enlightenment optimism, where Tom Jones, with all the fervor of his youth, opposes the misanthropy of his master with a deeply optimistic belief in human dignity.
However, according to Fielding, virtue itself is as insufficient as reason, divorced from virtue. The victory of Tom Jones over Blyfill is revealed not only as the victory of abstract Virtue over abstract Vice, but also as a victory of the owner of a good heart (even if he broke all the rules of bourgeois morality) over the one-sidedness of bourgeois prudence. This appeal from reason to feeling, from prudence to a good heart in Fielding's work already makes one anticipate the forthcoming criticism of bourgeois society in the works of sentimentalists.
Tom Jones marks the pinnacle of Fielding's creativity. The last period of Fielding's work that followed, in the center of which is Emilia, is characterized by a weakening of the writer's realistic talent and his satirical acuteness.
If Tom Jones contained only the known potential for the transition to sentimentalism, then Emilia, Fielding's last novel, shows that the shift in this direction has already actually been realized in his work. Despite the presence of a number of vivid satirical images (Judge Thrusher, Mrs. Allison, anonymous "noble lord" and others), the overall flavor of the book differs sharply from Fielding's previous novels. The dedication of Emilia to Allen speaks of the book's accusatory objectives:

This book is sincerely intended to help defend virtue and expose some of the most blatant abuses currently defiling both public and private life in our country.

However, they are achieved, in contrast to "Joseph Andrews" or "Tom Jones", not so much by means of realistic satire as by means of sentimental-moralistic didactics. The image of the resonant pastor Harrison (to a certain extent analogous to Allworthy's "Tom Jones") is highlighted in the novel, accordingly lowering the proportion of the image of Captain Buzz - the weak epigone of Tom Jones. Typical for a new stage in Fielding's work is the final "appeal" of Buzs, who allowed himself to doubt the omnipotence of Providence (after reading Barrow's sermons in the house of arrest). The very structure of the novel differs substantially from Fielding's previous books; Unlike Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, whose detailed composition provided the artist with a wide coverage of reality, the action of Emilia is centered around the narrow family world of Emilia. Having started his creative career with a parody of Richardson (Joseph Andrews), Fielding in Emilia noticeably approaches him. Characteristically, while “Joseph Andrews” and “Tom Jones” were condemned for “rudeness” and “immorality,” “Emilia” Fielding had to defend against opposite accusations of excessive sentimentality and flatness (see Covent-Garden Journal , 1752).
The article on "Reading" ("Covent-Carden Journal", 4 / II 1752), written after the appearance of "Emilia", confirms the change in the philosophical and aesthetic principles of F.; in this article, he disavows Aristophanes and Rabelais, whom he had recently admired in "Tom Jones," and attempts to reconcile with Richardson, praising him as "the witty author of Clarissa."

Meaning

Fielding's "comic epic" had its predecessors in the person of the Spanish rogue novel of the 16th-17th centuries, and in the person of the French "comic novel" of the 17th century. (Sorel, Scarron, Furetier). However, a new subject introduced by them into literature - the life of the plebeian "lower strata" of society - is used by them almost invariably in terms of the grotesque. In Fielding's work, the bourgeois enters literature in the prosaic costume of Mr. Allworthy and Tom Jones, in the usual guise of an ordinary citizen of bourgeois England of the 18th century. It is not for nothing that in the struggle for the dignity of the new bourgeois theme and the new bourgeois "comic-narrative" genre, Fielding, giving a definition of his "comic epic", so persistently delimits it from burlesque and caricature, from everything "absurd and monstrous."

Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Enlightenment realism of the mature period is represented in England by the work of Henry Fielding. Novelist, playwright, creator of the English political comedy, brilliant publicist, Fielding acted as the first theorist of the novel. His work was the pinnacle of English educational realism.

In his views, Fielding belonged to the radical-critical, anti-Puritan movement in the English Enlightenment. Fielding's worldview is materialistic and imbued with a cheerful free-thinking; he is characterized by a life-affirming humanism and a bright view of human nature. Bowing to reason, he treated with full confidence the sensual nature of man, defending the idea of ​​his right to the full completeness of earthly happiness. Fielding's humanism and free-thinking, his full-blooded realism, make him related to the great writers of the Renaissance - Shakespeare, Rabelais and Cervantes: the latter he called his teacher.

Fielding enriched English literature with the posing of significant problems and the artistic skill of revealing them. The acuteness of his critical thought manifested itself in political and social satire; a greedy and irrepressible interest in any aspect of life was reflected in the entire work of the writer. In English literature, Fielding was the first to combine a rogue adventure romance with a family and everyday one, or, as he himself defined it, “the epic of the high road” with the “epic of private life”.

Fielding's largest contribution to national and world literature was his novels, among which the first place belongs to the "comic epics" - "The Adventure Stories of Joseph Andrews" and "The Story of Tom Jones, Foundling." They most fully embodied the writer's desire for a versatile depiction of life, an epic wide scope of the narrative.

Henry Fielding was born into an impoverished aristocratic family and received a classical education at a privileged school in Eton. In 1728 he entered Leiden University in Holland, but did not graduate due to the need to earn a living on his own. Returning to England, he became a professional playwright.

The first period of Fielding's literary career (1728-1737) was associated with the theater. During this time, he wrote over twenty comedies and farces. The comedy Love in Several Masques (1728) was staged at the Drury Lane Theater in London. Its theme is the exposure of greed and pretense in love. Hypocrisy in subsequent works of Fielding will act as the main object of criticism, and pretense he will interpret in his theory of the novel as the main source of the comic.

Fielding the playwright wrote comedies of mores, containing sharp social satire ("The Coffee-House Politician, or the Trapped Judge" - The Coffee-House Politician, 1730; "The Old Libertines" - The Old Debauchees, 1732, etc.); political comedies (Don Quixote in England, 1734; Pasquin, a Dramatick Satire on the Times, 1736; Historical Calendar for 1736 - The Historical Register for the Year 1736, 1737); farces ("The author's farce, or London entertainment" - The Author "s Farce and the Pleasures of the Town, 1730; Death of Tom Thumb the Great, 1731, etc.); "ballad operas" in the form of comedies with a strongly pronounced farcical and parody beginning and inserted musical numbers ("The Grub-Street Opera" - The Grub-Street Opera, 1731; "The Maid -intrigan "- The Intriguing Chambermaid, 1733, etc.), as well as plays that gravitate in their nature to realistic dramas (" The Covent Garden Tragedy "- The Covent Garden Tragedy, 1732).

Fielding creates a topical socio-political comedy. The writer fought against the Walpole government, denounced the injustice of English law, the venality of politicians, the system of bribery, all kinds of fraud; he ridiculed the manners and base tastes of people corrupted by wealth.

His satire reached particular strength in the political comedies Don Quixote in England and Pasquin. These plays are directed against the social and political system of England. In terms of the strength of the satirical denunciation contained in them and the civic pathos, they are close to the works of Swift. Significant is the appearance in Fielding's work of the image of the glorious knight Don Quixote of La Mancha. From the Renaissance, Fielding takes it to England in the 18th century, from Spain to a seedy hotel in a provincial town. Don Quixote has to face wild morals, ignorance, prejudices. He becomes a witness and an unwitting participant in the election campaign and the associated bribery system. The innkeeper and local squires mistake Don Quixote for a madman, but it is he who judges what is happening in terms of reason and humanity. In the mouth of Don Quixote Fielding puts his views on the order established in England. Don Quixote talks about the plight of the poor and the impunity of the rich.

The playwright's experience enriched Fielding as a novelist, and as a novelist he ranked among the world's greatest writers. Fielding's significance and strength lay in his pioneering quest for the novel genre. In this regard, his real discoveries were associated with repulsion from Richardson and polemics with him, with the development of the theory of the novel and the creation of "comic epics" in which a positive program was embodied in highly artistic and significant images. The main tenets of Fielding's theory are set forth in the introduction to Joseph Andrews and in the 18 chapters that precede the 18 parts of Tom Jones.

Fielding defines the novels he creates as "comic epics in prose." He notes that no one had ever tried to write such works in English before him. What is their specificity? Fielding compares the comic novel to a comedic epic poem written in prose. This type of novel differs from comedy “in the same way that a serious epic poem differs from tragedy: its action is characterized by a longer duration and greater coverage; the circle of events described in it is much wider, and the characters are more diverse. "

The comic novel differs not only from the dramatic and poetic genres, but also from the serious novel. If in a serious novel the plot and action are sublime and solemn, in a comic novel they are light and funny. "The comic novel also differs in its actors, since it brings out the people of the lower classes and, therefore, describes the lower morals, while a serious novel shows us all the highest." Fielding emphasizes that in the comic novel, attention is paid not to the sublime, but to the funny. He sees the source of the funny in pretense; pretense stems from vanity and hypocrisy. "From the recognition of pretense, the funny arises." The effect of recognizing hypocrisy is especially strong. Fielding is merciless about hypocrisy. And if usually his laughter sounds cheerful and sympathetic, then when describing hypocrisy he reaches the heights of satire. In this case, Fielding follows the great satirists - Aristophanes, Rabelais, Cervantes, Moliere, Swift. In English literature, it was Fielding who introduced satire into the roguish novel.

The most important provision of Fielding's theory is the assertion of the connection between the novel and life. Comic writers "must always adhere strictly to nature, from whose true imitation all the pleasure we can thus bring to the reasonable reader will flow." In the first chapter of Tom Jones, Fielding explicitly states that the subject of his depiction is human nature. The novelist follows life and draws the comic from life itself, and therefore in the characters he creates, in the feelings conveyed, everything should be natural.

Fielding warns against mixing comic romance with burlesque; burlesque allows for obvious exaggeration and violation of proportions: "What a caricature is in painting, then burlesque is in literature." Fielding's images are devoid of caricature features. They are natural in their vitality, despite the extremes in their depiction. Fielding is not fond of portraying the ugly, but represents ordinary everyday life in his novels, he rarely caricatures and even when depicting negative characters, he deliberately tries to avoid the grotesque. His study of human nature led him to the conclusion that absolutely bad people do not exist: one cannot be considered bad just on the basis that he is not good enough. Fielding believes that in life, as on stage, “one and the same person plays the villain, then the hero; and the one who arouses admiration in us today, perhaps, tomorrow will become the object of our contempt. "

Fielding considers the creation of characters an important task. He sees the way to its solution not in copying nature, but in the expression of its essence. In this regard, his reasoning about the differences between “historians” and “biographers” is of fundamental importance (Joseph Andrews, Book III, Chapter 1). Fielding writes of two types in his approach to depicting reality. "Historians" are content with "copying from nature." They see their main task in "describing countries and cities, which they do quite well with the help of geographic maps, so they can be relied on for that." But the true truth of life, the depiction of human characters and actions, can be found not in the “historians” whom Fielding calls “topographers”, but in the “biographers”, among whom he also counts himself as a novelist. Emphasizing his desire for broad generalizations based on his observations of life and human nature, he noted: "I am describing not people, but mores, not an individual, but a species."

Fielding pays great attention to the composition of the novel. He defends the principle of unity of action and the dramatic way of its development, speaks of the need to combine in one novel the funny and the serious, the sublime and the low, the ordinary and the miraculous. Fielding also puts forward the problem of the length of time in life and in the novel. The task of the novelist is to reproduce in detail only those periods and moments in the life of the heroes that are filled with significant events. These significant periods of time, however brief, should be described in detail; but the novelist has every right to omit whole months and even years if they contain nothing worthy of attention.

Fielding compares the world to the stage of a theater, what happens in life - to a performance, and himself - to a playwright and director who directs the actors and monitors the reaction of the audience. As a novelist, Fielding drew heavily on his experience as a playwright and director. The dramatic beginning is expressed very strongly in his novels. It manifested itself in the liveliness of action, in the acuteness and tension of situations; Fielding showed that, like drama, the novel portrays intense human passions. He views life as "a great drama, similar in almost every detail to theatrical performances." In the XIX century. this comparison has been extensively developed in Thackeray's Vanity Fair. Fielding willingly uses the method of addressing the reader and the author's digressions. It is he who introduces into the novel the narration on behalf of the author-storyteller. Before Fielding, the novel was narrated in the first person (Defoe, Swift, Richardson). Fielding's theory of the realistic novel is embodied in his works.

The first "comic epic in prose" was the novel "Joseph Andrews" (The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, 1742), which at the same time became the first experience of creating a "novel of the high road". As a "comic epic," "Joseph Andrews" embodied Fielding's aspiration to create a broad picture of the life of various segments of his contemporary society; as a "novel of the high road", this work depicts heroes not within the narrow confines of family and home, but takes them in the truest sense of the word on the roads of England, forcing them to go through many adventures and difficulties, meet different people and test their strength in a collision with life ...

The theme of the "high road" is associated with the theme of travel, characteristic of the English novel. However, unlike Dafoe and Swift, Fielding portrays his heroes' travels not to distant lands; he leads them through England, introducing them to everyday life and the customs of ordinary people. The scene of action is inns and seedy hotels, manor houses and prisons, roadside village taverns. In this respect, Fielding's novel continues the tradition of the roguish (or picaresque) novel, which was home to Spain. In England before Fielding, he is represented by T. Nash's "The Unfortunate Traveler, or the Life of Jack Wilton" (1594) and "Moll Flanders" by Dafoe.

An important source of Fielding's novel was Cervantes' Don Quixote. The subtitle of "Joseph Andrews" is: "Written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote." The humanism of Cervantes, the crushing power of his ridicule, the theme of the clash of an honest and naive person with the vices of society and the very image of a noble but impractical person, a manner of narration filled with deep irony - all this was refracted in Fielding's novel, defining both the originality of the images and the features of the style of narration.

The reason for the appearance of "Joseph Andrews" was Richardson's novel "Pamela". Not accepting the ideological and aesthetic positions of Richardson, Fielding wrote a parody of his novel. But "Joseph Andrews" has outgrown the framework of parody and entered the history of English literature as a completely independent work, the first "novel of the high road." The novel is structured as the story of the adventures of Joseph Andrews - Pamela's brother. Since childhood, he has been in the service of a rich estate. After the death of the owner of the estate - Sir Thomas - his widow, Lady Booby, encroaches on the virtue of a young servant who attracted her. But Joseph staunchly resists her advances. In this single combat with vice, the example of Pamela becomes a reliable support for him. An angry Lady Booby alienates Joseph. This parody situation is the beginning of the novel.

However, the essence of the controversy with Richardson was not a comic play on individual situations and techniques. Fielding came out with a strong condemnation of pretense and vanity, criticizing social contradictions. It is no coincidence that at the end of the novel Pamela appears, who became the wife of Mr. Booby and embodies the hypocrisy, hypocritical decency and class arrogance that Fielding hates. If Richardson's Pamela displays enduring virtue and is rewarded with wealth and position in society, then Fielding's Joseph is expelled from Lady Booby's house; he faces difficulties in life, but shows himself to be a brave, sympathetic and truly noble person. Fielding contrasts the true humanity of his character with the hypocritical virtue of Pamela.

Before Fielding, the picaresque novel was built on the principle of alternating chapters, each of which could be an independent novella, reproducing one or another adventure of the hero or his meeting with a certain person, who occasionally appears on the pages of the novel. It was an eventful novel, a novel of situations. In contrast to him, without losing the dynamism of the action, emphasizing the dramatic nature of its development, Fielding's novel is already to a large extent a romance of characters. In Joseph Andrews, Pastor Adams' portrayal of Fielding's mastery of character is most striking. It embodies the writer's democratic sympathies. In the history of the English novel, the gallery of images of eccentrics in the works of Smollet, Goldsmith, Dickens began with the image of Adams. Joseph Andrews initiated the construction of the novel as the story of the life and adventures of a young man who enters life and is shown in an encounter with it. This principle will become the main one among the novelists of the XVTII-XIX centuries. In the work of Fielding himself, he was further developed in "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" (The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, 1749).

Tom JONES is Fielding's best work, the pinnacle of the educational realistic novel in England. Reproduced in "Tom Jones" picture of contemporary social reality writer is truthful and multifaceted. The plot of action in the novel is the village and the city, landowners' estates and capital salons, roadside hotels and fairs, prisons and the dwellings of the poor. The novel depicts people of various social strata: nobles, big and small bourgeois, church ministers, homeless vagabonds, judicial officials. The principle of panoramism, advanced in Joseph Andrews, was brilliantly developed in Tom Jones. The novel is built as the story of the life of the protagonist Tom Jones (from the day of his birth to his 21st birthday). Fielding connects his ideas about the true "human nature" with the image of Tom Jones. It reflected Fielding's characteristic optimism and belief in healthy principles in man and in life during the creation of this novel.

Tom Jones is a foundling who grew up in the house of the landowner Allworthy, who raised him along with his nephew Blyfill. Tom is smart, courageous, sociable, outwardly attractive. He is honest and kind, sympathetic and straightforward. He does not look like the cunning and hypocritical Blifeel, skillfully hiding his true nature behind external modesty and ostentatious piety. Over the years, Blifeel's dislike for Tom and the spirit of rivalry between them grows. A beggar and rootless foundling becomes a rival of Blifil in love. Blyfill's insidious intrigues, his slander lead to the expulsion of Tom from the Allworthy house. The hero's wanderings begin. Like Joseph Andrews, Tom goes through all sorts of misadventures on his way to London. Heavy trials await him. They want to forcibly recruit Tom into sailors; he goes to jail; it is only by chance that he avoids the gallows. In the end, he connects with his beloved Sophia Western and marries her.

In the image of Tom Jones, Fielding continued his controversy with Richardson. He abandoned the idealization of the hero and the one-sided view of virtue. He is not afraid to show a person who is guided in his behavior not by religious dogmas, but by impulses of feelings and passions. Tom Jones is a temperamental person, deeply and strongly feeling. He may be delusional and make mistakes, but he is always natural.

Tom's humanity is revealed by comparing him with Blifeill. Through these two contrasting characters, Fielding seeks to reveal the contradictory nature of the world. Contrast also underlies the action of many of the novel's episodes; descriptions are also built on the principle of contrast.

The satirical grotesque used by Swift in his portrayal of yehu is unacceptable to Fielding, as is Richardson's idealization of bourgeois decency. He believes that in people "there are good and benevolent feelings that encourage them to contribute to the happiness of others"; that "people often do evil, not being in the depths of their souls bad and depraved." Fielding's enlightening realism stems from his belief in the organizing and guiding role of reason.

Fielding understood the social nature of injustice and popular misery in bourgeois society. In one of his last pamphlets (Letters from Bedlam, 1752), he identifies money and social differences as the main obstacles to people's attainment of happiness.

In the last years of the writer's life, his optimism and trust in "human nature" are shaken. This is evidenced by his pamphlets "Modern Dictionary" (1752) and the last novel "Amelia" (Amelia, 1752). At the end of his career, he would hardly have been able to rank himself among the writers of only a "comedic warehouse".