Joseph Andrews Analysis

Setting in Joseph Andrews is all about the characters. Yes, it's kind of weird that we get pages of description of Fanny's face and hardly anything about the English countryside the characters trav...

Oh, hey, third person omniscient. Joseph gets a lot of playing time in the story, but the real star of the show is the intrusive narrator. That pesky guy weaves in and out of every character's cons...

In Joseph Andrews, we've got a handsome hero who hits the road to find his one true love. Along the way, he encounters obstacles galore in order to get back to the place where he grew up. If that i...

Part of Fielding's goal with Joseph Andrews is to analyze "the only source of the true ridiculous (as it appears to me) […] affectation" (Preface.15). We'd call that a lighthearted approach, to t...

Yep, we said the writing style is rollicking. Think about a rollercoaster, slowly inching toward the top of the steepest drop. When you head over the edge, you're thrown around a little bit, but it...

The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his friend Mr. Abraham Adams is a mouthful. We think it's pretty significant that the full title includes both Joseph and his right-hand man,...

Once we find out what Joseph's strawberry-shaped birthmark really means, the story ends pretty quickly. We already know deep down that Joseph's a gentleman, so it should be no surprise that the new...

Think of Joseph Andrews as a choose-your-own-adventure book in terms of toughness. If you feel like chuckling a bit, you can just read Fielding's book for its slapstick humor. After all, Parson Ada...

Joseph's got a pretty sweet gig as a footman for Sir Thomas Booby. Sure, Lady Booby has the hots for him, but he's the talk of London-town. After Sir Thomas dies, Joseph's just managing to hold off...

Joseph Andrews doesn't have a ounce of worldliness in his whole body. He's handsome and totally sweet, but he has no idea that Lady Booby is romantically interested in him. Lady Booby does him a...

Joseph leaves his cushy job as a footman when Lady Booby gets a little too amorous toward him. He journeys to the Booby country estate to find his sweetheart, Fanny, but the road is paved with ruff...

Check out this 1978 movie review of Tom Richardson's Joseph Andrews. Is it a coincidence that a guy named Richardson is making Fielding's movie into a movie? Conspiracy theories abound. (Source.)Wa...

Between the graphic descriptions of Lady Booby's lust and the extreme efforts undertaken by Mrs. Slipslop to get Joseph into bed, we might think there would be more sex. But no: Joseph triumphs ove...

Colley Cibber, poet laureate in eighteenth century England (1.1.4).Homer, Greek poet (2.9.2).Narcissus, vain youth in mythology (2.12.2).Daedalus, father of Icarus, from Ovid (2.17.1).Atlantis writ...