Description
Book SynopsisThe author breaks with old critical commonplaces that contrast Fielding's "masculinity" with Samuel Richardson's "feminine" sensibilities. She argues that a preoccupation with the tenuousness of gendered identity appears throughout Fielding's writings, and that Fielding shared that preoccupation with his contemporaries.
Trade Review"This excellent study of Fielding's works takes as its central metaphor the masque (or mask) used throughout his career to explore the often complicated relationships among biological sex, gender, sexuality, and identity. The author is impressive both in her scope . . . and in her incisiveness. . . . This is a major work."—
ChoiceTable of ContentsIntroduction; Part I. Fielding's Plays: 1. 'When men women turn': the drama of gender reversals; Part II. Joseph Andews: 2. The meaning of a male Pamela: genre and gender; 3. 'The natural amphitheatre': dramatic satire, the novel, and Milton's Christian epic; 4. 'The exact picture of his mother': misrecognition, mortal loss, and Joseph's promise of reunion; Part III. Tom Jones and the Jacobite's Journal: 5. Male pretenders and female rebels: Whig responses to the forty-five; 6. Tom Jones: Jacobitism, and gender: history and fiction at the ghosting hour; 7. 'The same Birchen argument': flogging, satire, and the Jacobite's ass. Part IV. Amelia: 8. 'If this was real': female heroism in Fielding's final novel; Epilogue; Death, witches, and bitches in The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.
