“I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing” : narrative performance and consumption in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.

• Main Author: Yeo, Shu Fang.
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/49530
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Critics of 'Tom Jones' have derided the ‘intrusive’ and ‘garrulous’ narrator, or otherwise attempted to justify the authorial voice of the narrator as ancillary to the ‘main’ plot of Tom’s story. In this essay, I propose to reconceive an alternative aspect of the explicit narratorial activity by suggesting that in 'Tom Jones', to perceive well is first to be able to appreciate precisely the artifice of the narrator in creating his narrative world. In doing so, I argue that the instances of narrative performances constantly figure narrative as desirable, compelling and as a sign of cultural capital, thus encoding a self-valorisation of narrative that reflects Fielding’s obligatory but necessary attempts to advertise his tasteful novelistic practice.