In which I honor Rob Reiner by looking back at “Princess Bride” and how I used it to teach Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.”
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Tag Archives: Henry Fielding
Rob Reiner’s 18th Century Sensibility
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Princess Bride, Rob Reiner, Tom Jones, William Goldman Comments closed
My Life as Bildungsroman
Upon leaving college, I came to see literature more as a means of escaping my life than as a way of engaging with it more fully. That’s because I was unsatisfied with this life.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged bildungsroman, Don Quixote, Main Street, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sinclair Lewis, Tom Jones Comments closed
Laughter in the Presidential Campaign
Trump and Vance’s jokes are designed to beat down, not include. They elicit Hobbesian laughter, not Shaftesburian.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged blood libel, Caite Upton, Comedy, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Laughter, Leviathan, Mel Brooks, mysogeny, Tom Jones Comments closed
On Comedy, Seinfeld, and Tom Jones
Seinfeld has complained that wokeness is ruining comedy. Similar complains show up in Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Brian Boone, Humor, political correctness, Seinfeld, Tom Jones, wokeness Comments closed
Austen’s Revolutionary Style
Austen may have innovated a way to blend satire with romance as a way to protect us from heartbreak.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Emma, Emma Bovary, free indirect style, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gustave Flaubert, Horace, ironic romance, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Tom Jones Comments closed
Rom-Coms, Defense against Heartbreak
One way of seeing “Tom Jones” is as “valentine armor,” alternating between romance and light satire. As such, it saves us from broken hearts.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Comedy, Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes, Pamela, Romantic Comedy, Samuel Richardson, Shamela, Tom Jones Comments closed
A Christian Attack on Toxic Masculinity
In “Sir Charles Grandison,” Richardson attacks toxic masculinity in ways that feel very modern.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Clarissa, dueling, Jane Austen, Joseph Andrews, Northanger Abbey, Pamela, Samuel Richardson, Shamela, Sir Charles Grandison, Tom Jones, toxic masculinity Comments closed