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Fielding's Essay on Conversation: a Courtesy Guide to Joseph Andrews ?

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Fielding's Essay on Conversation: a Courtesy Guide to Joseph Andrews ? TTMMCLOUGHLIN FIELDING'S ESSAY ON CONVERSATION: A COURTESY GUIDE TO JOSEPH ANDREWS ? What prompted this research was the realisation that Fielding was working on both the Essay on Conversation and Joseph Andrews at the same time. During those few difficult months at the end of 1741, "laid up in the Gout, with a favourite Child dying in one Bed, and my Wife in a Condition very little better, on another," these two projects were going forward.1 Much ink has been spent on the genesis of Joseph Andrews, but little attention has been given to the coincidence that he was working on a standard conduct-book, the Essay on Conversation, while also writing his first novel. It is interesting to recall that Richardson's Pamela, published in 1741, also had close ties with a projected conduct-book, his Familiar Letters (1741) written "to instruct handsome Girls, who were obliged to go out to Service... how to avoid the Snares that might be laid against their Virtue."2 This case together with that of Fielding points to 1740-41 as a moment in English literature when two major fiction writers realised in different ways that the moral purpose of the conduct-book might be more pleasantly and extensively served by the novel. The basic question therefore which this paper seeks to answer is what connection, if any, is there between the Essay and Joseph Andrews or, in another form, is Joseph Andrews an alternative way of writing the Essay, a kind of conduct novel ?3 In order to answer such questions it is important first to recall the main features of Fielding's Essay. It runs to about thirty pages and has three main sections. The first establishes a philosophical groundwork derived mainly from the liberal humanist tradition of Cicero and Locke: "Man is generally 1 Preface, Miscellanies by Henry Fielding ed. Henry Knight Miller. Wesley Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) 14. An Essay on Conversation is printed in this volume, 119-152. 2 Johannes Stinstra, cited by T. C. Durran Eaves and Ben D. Kempel, Samuel Richardson. A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) 89-90. 3 The term 'conduct novel' is used by Catherine Sobra Green, The Courtesy Novel (1740- 1820): Women Writing for Women, Ph.D. Georgia State University, 1983 (DA vol. 45 (1984) 190 A). 94 TTMMcLOUGHLIN represented as an Animal formed for and delighting in Society."4 Men make conversation, he says, of three sorts—"with God, with themselves, and with one another"—which categories may be dismissed as commonplace, but they are the major divisions of a book Joseph Andrews had read and which Fielding repeatedly alludes to, The Whole Duty of Man (1658).5 Conversation is "the Art of pleasing or doing Good to one another."6 The word 'conversation' is used in a very broad sense of social intercourse. The interchangeability of the two terms—"pleasing or doing Good"—is crucial to Fielding's moral argument that conversation is not just an art or skill to facilitate social acceptability, but an art to a moral end, namely "doing Good." This manifests itself as good-breeding, which he sums up in Christian terms by citing the New Testament's "comprehensive Rule", namely, "Do unto all Men, as you would they should do unto you." 7 The imperative note of this reformist principle comes through in the authoritarian tone of the Essay and signifies the urgency which characterises Fielding's moral outlook. The task is a pressing national issue. He had unwittingly summed up this view a couple of years earlier in The Champion: "Whatever is wicked, hateful absurd or ridiculous, must be exposed, and punished before this nation is brought to that height of purity and good manners to which I wish to see it exalted." 8 The second and third sections of the Essay give rules and advice on two ways of pleasing in conversation, by actions and by words. Approximately half the Essay deals with actions. Advice is given on how to entertain guests to dinner, the proper conduct for visiting a private house, attending a public assembly, how to behave towards superiors, equals and inferiors. The key phrases are, "we must be profitable Servants to each other: we are, in the second Place, to proceed to the utmost Verge in paying the respect due to others." 9 Although Fielding here puts his primary emphasis on profitable service it is not immediately apparent what this will achieve. Conversation is not for example a means to knowledge or self-discovery. "The first step in Conversation is to avoid hurting or giving any Offence." 10 Fielding, like 4 Essay, 119. 5 Essay, 121; see James E. Evans. "Fielding, The Whole Duty of Man, Shamela, and Joseph Andrews " Philological Quarterly 61, n° 1 (1982): 212. Evans points out that The Whole Duty of Man had been reissued in mid-1741 and Fielding defended it against its detractors (214). 6 Essay 123. 7 Essay 124; he repeats the point in The Covent-Garden Journal 55 (18 July, 1752). 8 The Champion (22 Dec. 1739), in The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, ed. William Ernst Henley, 16 vols. (London: Cass, 1967), XV, 113. 9 Essay, 126. 10 Essay, 125. .
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