Short Questions and Answers of ‘Joseph

Andrew’ by Fielding
Who is Mrs Slip Slop. Describe her personality in your own words?

Mrs Slip Slop is a woman servant of Lady Booby who pursues Joseph.
Physically she was an ugly woman.

Who is Betty? What type of girl she is?

Betty is a warm-hearted chambermaid at Tow-wouse Inn. She has good

nature but lustful.

Who is Lady Booby?

Lady Booby is the widow of Sir Thomas Booby. she is hot-blood young
woman. She tries to seduce Joseph every way possible.

What is comic epic in prose?

Comic epic in prose is an epic presented comically that consist

of comic hero, comic fights, comic journey etc not in poetry but in
prose.

What are the major themes of ‘Joseph Andrews’?

The major themes of ‘Joseph Andrew’ are helplessness and power of

goodness, affection, vanity, charity and religion, hypocrisy,
and chastity, town and country, class and birth, reality verses
appearance, etc.

Who is Fanny? Describe her personality in your own words?

Fanny is the heroin of the novel and she is a beautiful young girl. She
is gentle, sweet and sensible girl.

Describe the personality of the Surgeon in ‘ Joseph Andrew’?

The Surgeon is a comic character. He tells Joseph that he will die
soon due to his injuries.

Who is Betty? What is her role in the novel ‘ Joseph Andrew’?

Betty is a warm-hearted chambermaid at Tow-wouse Inn. She looks

after Joseph at Tow- wouse Inn when he is injured by ruffains and fall
in love with him. Joseph rejects her amorous advances.

Who is Mr. Trulliber? Describe his personality?

Mr. Trulliber is a hypocritical country parson and he is a hog dealer. He

is completely lacking the virtue of charity. He parson only on Sunday.

Who is Peter Pounce?

Peter Pounce is a steward to Lady Booby. He is a dishonest man.

He makes money from the wages of the servant’s of Lady Booby.

Briefly state two features of fielding’s comic epic in prose?

Two features of Fielding’s comic epic in prose are the combination of

comic epic and prose epic, and the foundations for the novel.

What different services were performed by Joseph for Sir Thomas

Booby?

Joseph performed the different services for Sir Thomas Booby are
as stable boy and then footman to Sir Thomas’ wife Lady Booby.

Parson Adam is considered as the real source of intrest in the novel . It

is true??

Yes it is true that Parson Adam is considered as the real source of

interest in the novel because of his absent mindedness, forgetfulness
and simple-mindedness.

Who was parson Barnabas?

Parson Barabas was a punch drinking clergyman. He is more intrested

in discussions of legal matters than his religious purpose.
Who were the real parents of Joseph?

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were the real parents of Joseph.

(i) What is a novel?

Ans. A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and
events, usually in the form of a sequential story. "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen and "A
Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens are famous English novels.
(ii) What is Fielding's concept of novel?
Ans. In his preface to "Joseph Andrews", Fielding claims that novel is a genre of writing "which I
do not remember to have been hitherto attempted in our language". He defined it as the
"comic epic-poem in prose": a work of prose fiction, epic in length and variety of incident and
character, in the hypothetical spirit of Homer's lost comic poem Margites.
(iii) Write the names of four novels of Fielding.
Ans. Joseph Andrews (1742), Jonathan Wild (1748), Tom Jones (1749) and Amelia (1751) are the
famous novels of Henry Fielding.
(iv) What factors influenced Fielding in his conception and composition of 'Joseph Andrews'?
Ans. Fielding's first venture into prose fiction came a year previously with the publication in
pamphlet form of Shamela, a travesty of, and direct response to, the stylistic failing and moral
hypocrisy that Fielding saw in Richardson's Pamela. The impetus of the novel, as Fielding claims
in his preface, is the establishment of a genre of writing "which I do not remember to have been
hitherto attempted in our language".
(v) What is the purpose of the Author's Preface in 'Joseph Andrews'?
Ans. The purpose of Fielding's preface in "Joseph Andrews" is to define and defend his chosen
genre, "comic-epic poem in prose". He is particularly concerned to differentiate the comic epic,
and comedy generally, from burlesque. He also defends the various vices inserted in the novel.
(vi) How is the novel 'Joseph Andrews' related to 'Pamela'?
Ans. Fielding wrote "Shamela" as a satirical response to Richardson's "Pamela", and his longer
and more serious "Joseph Andrews" likewise draws on Richardson's novel for an equivocal sort
of inspiration. While "Shamela" is a straightforward travesty of "Pamlea", "Joseph Andrews" is
something more complex, and its relation to "Pamela" is something other than the relation of
parody to original.
(vii) Define digression.
Ans. A digression is a stylistic device authors employ to create a temporary departure from the
main subject of the narrative to focus on apparently unrelated topics, explaining background
details. However, after this temporary shift, authors return to the main topic at the end of the
narrative. There are several famous digressions in Homer, such as the "wall scene" in Book 3 of
the "Iliad".
(viii) What is the purpose of digression in 'Joseph Andrews'?
Ans. It is perhaps a development of Fielding's verbose writing style that he includes so many
digressions in "Joseph Andrews". There are three main interpolated tales in the novel. In
regards to these interpolated tales, Fielding employs a variety of tactics to make the stories
more believable. These inserted stories also illustrate other tensions related to writing a novel,
such as control and interruption.
(ix) Define the narrator?
Ans. A narrator is the voice that an author takes on to tell a story. This voice can have a
personality quite different from the author's. For example, in his story "The Tell-Tale Heart",
Edgar Allan Poe makes his narrator a raving lunatic.
(x) Define burlesque.
Ans. Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing
the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of the subjects. Contrasting
examples of literary burlesque are Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" and Samuel Butler's
"Hudibras". W.S. Gilbert's "Robert the Devil" is an example of theatrical burlesque.
(xi) What is bildungsroman?
Ans. Bildungsroman is a special kind of novel that focuses on the psychological and moral
growth of its main character from his or her youth to adulthood. "Tom Jones" by Henry Fielding
and "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens are examples of bildungsroman.
(xii) What is important about the plot of the novel 'Joseph Andrews'?
Ans. "Joseph Andrews" is a picaresque novel in structure, for its plot-line is similar to the one-
line structure of picaresque fiction. The plot of the novel progresses by "shutting', moving
forward by "small oscillations of emotion", which, in the larger, all-over design, are small parts
of a unified whole, episodic in nature. At times, events seem like reversals, followed by forward
movement.
(xiii) What are the major themes of 'Joseph Andrews'?
Ans. The vulnerability and power of goodness, charity and religion, town and country, class and
birth, reality verses appearance, providence, affection, vanity, hypocrisy, and chastity are the
major themes of "Joseph Andrews".
(xiv) According to Fielding, what are the proper roles of clergy?
Ans. One role of the clergy would be charity, clearly evident in the character of Parson Adams.
Adams also illustrates the clergy's role in instructing the members of their parish, as well as
demonstrating and modeling Christian morals and propriety. Adam's character is the epitome of
honesty.
(xv) What is the significance of the letter from Joseph to his sister?
Ans. Joseph's letter to his sister Pamela is significant because it illustrates his innocence. He
thinks that Lady Booby is perhaps pursuing him, but charitably ascribes this to distraction over
the death of Sir Thomas. In any case, he anticipates his dismissal and advises Pamela of his
return to the Booby country-seat.

Picaresque novel
The picaresque novel (Spanish: picaresca, from pícaro, for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose
fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish hero/heroineof low social class who lives by his or her
wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements
of comedy and satire. This style of novel originated in 16th-century Spain and flourished
throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. It continues to influence modern literature.
According to the traditional view of Thrall and Hibbard (first published in 1936), seven qualities
distinguish the picaresque novel or narrative form, all or some of which an author may employ for
effect:[1]
 A picaresque narrative is usually written in first person as an autobiographical account.

 The main character is often of low character or social class. He or she gets by with wit and
rarely deigns to hold a job.

 There is no plot. The story is told in a series of loosely connected adventures or episodes.

 There is little if any character development in the main character. Once a pícaro, always a
pícaro. His or her circumstances may change but they rarely result in a change of heart.

 The pícaro's story is told with a plainness of language or realism.

 Satire is sometimes a prominent element.

 The behavior of a picaresque hero or heroine stops just short of criminality. Carefree or
immoral rascality positions the picaresque hero as a sympathetic outsider, untouched by the
false rules of society.
The word pícaro first starts to appear in Spain with the current meaning in 1545, though at the time it
had no association with literature.[2] The word pícaro does not appear in Lazarillo de Tormes (1554),
the novella credited by modern scholars with founding the genre. The expression picaresque
novel was coined in 1810.[3][4] Whether it has any validity at all as a generic label in the Spanish
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—and Cervantes certainly used "picaresque" with a different
meaning than it has today—has been called into question. There is an unending campaign within
Hispanic studies about what the term means, or meant, and which works were, or should be, so
called. The only work clearly called "picaresque" by its contemporaries was Mateo
Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache (1599), which to them was the Libro del pícaro (The Book of the
Pícaro).[5]

History
Lazarillo de Tormes and its sources[edit]
While elements of Chaucer and Boccaccio have a picaresque feel and may have contributed to the
style,[6] the modern picaresque begins with Lazarillo de Tormes,[7] which was published anonymously
in 1554 in Burgos, Medina del Campo, and Alcalá de Henares in Spain, and also in Antwerp, which
at the time was under Spanish rule as a major city in the Spanish Netherlands. It is variously
considered either the first picaresque novel or at least the antecedent of the genre.
The protagonist, Lázaro, lives by his wits in an effort to survive and succeed in an impoverished
country full of hypocrisy. As a pícaro character, he is an alienated outsider, whose ability to expose
and ridicule individuals compromised with society gives him a revolutionary stance. [8] Lázaro states
that the motivation for his writing is to communicate his experiences of overcoming deception,
hypocrisy, and falsehood (engaño).[9]
The character type draws on elements of characterization already present in Roman literature,
especially Petronius' Satyricon. Lázaro shares some of the traits of the central figure of Encolpius, a
former gladiator,[10][11] though it is unlikely that the author had access to Petronius' work.[12] From the
comedies of Plautus, Lazarillo borrows the figure of the parasite and the supple slave. Other traits
are taken from Apuleius's The Golden Ass.[10] The Golden Ass and Satyricon are rare surviving
samples of the "Milesian tale", a popular genre in the classical world, and were revived and widely
read in Renaissance Europe.
The principal episodes of Lazarillo are based on Arabic folktales that were well-known to the Moorish
inhabitants of Spain. The Arabic influence may account for the negative portrayal of priests and other
church officials in Lazarillo.[13] Arabic literature, which was read widely in Spain in the time of Al-
Andalus and possessed a literary tradition with similar themes, is thus another possible influence on
the picaresque style. Al-Hamadhani (d.1008) of Hamadhan (Iran) is credited with inventing the
literary genre of maqamat in which a wandering vagabond makes his living on the gifts his listeners
give him following his extemporaneous displays of rhetoric, erudition, or verse, often done with
a trickster's touch.[14] Ibn al-Astarkuwi or al-Ashtarkuni (d.1134) also wrote in the genre maqamat,
comparable to later European picaresque.[15]
The curious presence of Russian loan-words in the text of the Lazarillo also suggests the influence
of medieval Slavic tales of tricksters, thieves, itinerant prostitutes, and brigands, who were common
figures in the impoverished areas bordering on Germany to the west. When diplomatic ties to
Germany and Spain were established under the emperor Charles V, these tales began to be read in
Italian translations in the Iberian Peninsula.[16]
As narrator of his own adventures, Lázaro seeks to portray himself as the victim of both his ancestry
and his circumstance. This means of appealing to the compassion of the reader would be directly
challenged by later picaresque novels such as Guzmán de Alfarache (1599/1604) and
the Buscón (composed in the first decade of the 17th century and first published in 1626) because
the idea of determinism used to cast the pícaro as a victim clashed with the Counter-Reformation
doctrine of free will

Joseph Andrews can’t be called a regular picaresque novel for Fielding employs elements of this
tradition in an exposition of his own theory of the Ridiculous. He was writing a “comic epic-poem in
pose”. He adapts the picaresque tradition to his own theory of the novel, which shows the influence
of various other literary forms besides the picaresque.

However, the picaresque motif helps Fielding to fulfill his aim of ridiculing the affectations of human
beings. The different strata of society can be represented through the picaresque mode. The
travelers meet squires, innkeepers, landladies, persons, philosophers, lawyers and surgeons,
beggars, pedlars and robbers and rogues. Particular social evils prevalent in the day, and follies and
foibles of human nature in general are effectively exposed. Fielding’s satire is pungent as he
presents the worldly and crafty priests and the callous, vicious and inhuman country squires. Malice,
selfishness, vanities, hypocrisies, lack of charity, all are ridiculed as human follies.

The picaresque tradition belongs to Spain and derived from the word “picaro”, meaning a rogue or a
villain. The picaresque originally involved the misadventure of the rogue-hero, mainly on the
highway. Soon, however, the rogue was replaced by a conventional hero – gallant and chivalric. The
comic element lay in the nature of the hero’s adventures, through which, generally, society was
satirized.

The Picaresque novel is the loosest in plot – the hero is literally let loose on the high road for his
adventures. The writer got the opportunity to introduce a large variety of characters and events. The
hero wanders from place to place encountering thieves an drogues, rescuing damsels in distress,
fighting duels, falling in love, being thrown in prison, and meeting a vast section of society. The
opportunity of representing a large section of society gave the author the power of exploring the
follies of the widest possible range of humanity. As the hero meets a gamut of characters from the
country squire to the haughty aristocrat, from hypocrite to ill-tempered soldiers, the writer is able to
introduce with the least possible incongruity, the saint and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious.
The writer has a chance to present the life, culture and morality prevalent in his time, and to satirize
the evils.
Fielding acknowledged his debt to Cervantes, whose Don Quixote is the best known picaresque
novel in Spanish.

Like the Don and Sancho Panza, Parson Adams and Joseph set out on a journey which involves
them in a series of adventures, some of them burlesque, at several country inns or rural houses.
Like the Don, Parson Adams is a dreamy idealist. But there are differences, too, between Joseph
Andrews and the picaresque tradition, vital enough to consider Fielding’s novel as belonging to the
genre of its own.

The central journey in Joseph Andrews is not mainly a quest for adventure as it is in the picaresque
tradition. It is a sober return journey homewards. Joseph and Lady Booby are taken to London and
the reader is given a glimpse of society’s ways in that great city.

It is in Chapter 10 of Book I that the picaresque element enters the novel, with Joseph setting out in
a borrowed coat towards home. The picaresque tradition is maintained uptil the end of Book III.
Joseph meets with the first misadventure when he is set upon by robbers, beaten, stripped and
thrown unconscious into a ditch. A passing stagecoach and its passengers very reluctantly convey
Joseph to an inn. The incident gives ample scope to Fielding for satirizing the pretenses and
affectations of an essentially inhuman society.

The Tow-wouse Inn provides a grim picture of callous human beings – the vain and ignorant surgeon
and the drinking parson. Once again kindness and generosity come from an apparently immoral girl,
Betty the chambermaid. With the arrival of Parson Adams, the picaresque journey takes on a more
humorous tone, with plenty of farce. The encounter with the “Patriot” who would like to see all
cowards banged but who turns tail at the first sight of danger, leads to the meeting with Fanny. She
is rescued by Adams in proper picaresque-romance style with hero. Several odd characters are met
on the way – such as the hunting squire – the squire who makes generous but false promises. Then
comes the abduction of Fanny – and the reintroduction of something more serious.

We also have the interpolated stories, which belong to the picaresque tradition. In his use of this
device, Fielding shows how far he has come from the picaresque school.

To conclude, Joseph Andrews has a rather rambling and discursive narrative, which makes us to
believe that it is a picaresque novel. But, on the whole, it is not a picaresque novel rather the
picaresque mode has helped him in the development of his comic theory – that of ridiculing the
affectations of human beings.

The Spanish words picaresque and picaroachieved currency in Spain shortly after 1600. Today
they are terms in literary criticism, sometimes misused because of the vague meaning attached to
them. The revival of the genre in the twentieth century was accompanied by an increased critical
interest in this type of novel, with the result that some critics try to stretch the definition of the
picaresque while others attempt to restrict it. Still, some features are generally accepted as
distinct characteristics of the picaresque, including a loose, episodic structure; a rogue-hero (the
picaro) who is on the move and goes through a series of encounters with representatives of a
hostile and corrupt world; a first-person narrative; and a satirical approach to the society in
which the adventures occur.

The typical social background of the picaresque involves a disordered, disintegrating world in
which traditional values are breaking down. The instability of the social structure permits the
emergence of the picaro, a resilient rogue but not a criminal, a person of low birth or uncertain
parentage, an outsider whose adventures take him or her from innocence to experience. In this
sense, the picaresque novel has affinities with the bildungsroman, but unlike the protagonist of
the latter, the picaro is a fixed character. While he (traditionally a “he”) learns survival
techniques from his adventures, he does not change inwardly; he remains faithful to his healthy
instincts without questioning the larger order of things. Pressured by circumstances to choose
between integrity and survival, the picaro makes the pragmatic choice and learns to adjust to the
corrupt values of his environment.

Sixteenth century Spain

The picaresque genre emerged in sixteenth century Spain, an age of turmoil and upheaval when
medieval homogeneity and social stability were giving way to Renaissance mobility and a
greater emphasis on the importance of the individual. All Spanish picaresque novels present a
low-life character passing from master to master in search of some financial stability, thus
providing a splendid occasion for the author to give an overall picture of Spain in an age of
disintegrating values. The differences between the two first examples of the genre, however,
already indicate its protean nature.

Lazarillo de Tormes, published anonymously in 1554 (English translation, 1576), presents a

picaro, a victim of tricksters who by necessity becomes a trickster himself. The novel’s
anonymous author was the first to employ a realistic first-person narrator, creating a
countergenre to the fastidious courtly literature of the period. Some critics suggest that both the
anonymous author of Lazarillo de Tormes and Mateo Alemán, the writer of the second Spanish
picaresque, were Jews or converted Jews, outsiders to the mainstream of Spanish society; in any
case, the picaresque view of life is an outsider’s point of view as far as protagonist and author are
concerned.

Fear of starvation and anger are Lazarillo’s true masters. The lesson he draws from his
experience of privation and exploitation is not one of resistance or revolt; on the contrary