How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Who ever demanded the reasons of that nice unity of time or place which is now established to be so essential to dramatic poetry? What critic hath been ever asked, why a play may not contain two days as well as one? Or why the audience (provided they travel, like electors, without any expense) may not be wafted fifty miles as well as five? Hath any commentator well accounted for the limitation which an antient critic hath set to the drama, which he will have contain neither more nor less than five acts? Or hath any one living attempted to explain what the modern judges of our theatres mean by that word low; by which they have happily succeeded in banishing all humour from the stage, and have made the theatre as dull as a drawing-room! Upon all these occasions the world seems to have embraced a maxim of our law, viz., cuicunque in arte sua perito credendum est: for it seems perhaps difficult to conceive that any one should have had enough of impudence to lay down dogmatical rules in any art or science without the least foundation. (5.1.2)
Back when Henry Fielding was writing, there were many more do's-and-don'ts that writers had to obey to be taken seriously. If you wanted to be a respected playwright in the classical tradition, you had to produce drama that (a) has five acts; (b) deals with "serious" themes like Love and Death and Heroism and Gods, etc., etc.; and (c) keeps to the dramatic unities.
But in this passage, the narrator is practically shouting through the page: why do we have to follow these rules? What is the reason for all of this structure? Partly, Fielding is speaking out against critics who might say that Tom Jones is bad just because it deals with funny topics and ordinary, non-heroic people. But he also has a real point to make: critics shouldn't let themselves get so distracted by the form of a work of art that they pay no attention to its substance. Just because Tom Jones is a little more realistic (and more fun) than a classical play doesn't mean that it has no serious value.
Quote #5
Sophia was in her chamber, reading, when her aunt came in. The moment she saw Mrs Western, she shut the book with so much eagerness, that the good lady could not forbear asking her, What book that was which she seemed so much afraid of showing? "Upon my word, madam," answered Sophia, "it is a book which I am neither ashamed nor afraid to own I have read. It is the production of a young lady of fashion, whose good understanding, I think, doth honour to her sex, and whose good heart is an honour to human nature." Mrs Western then took up the book, and immediately after threw it down, saying—"Yes, the author is of a very good family; but she is not much among people one knows. I have never read it; for the best judges say, there is not much in it."—"I dare not, madam, set up my own opinion," says Sophia, "against the best judges, but there appears to me a great deal of human nature in it; and in many parts so much true tenderness and delicacy, that it hath cost me many a tear." (6.5.1)
It's hard to imagine a time when reading novels was barely respectable, but the eighteenth century was, indeed, such a time. The English novel was just getting started, and a lot of people disapproved of the strong emotional content of these new books. They thought that novels were for women (in a bad way), and not worth the attention of serious readers. Ugh.
Now, we are sure that a lot of these early novels were really silly. (After all, lots of novels now are pretty dumb.) But Tom Jones is clearly making the case that, just because a novel can be emotional doesn't mean that it can't also deal with really important topics. Here, Sophia defends the novel she's reading using the same terms that the narrator uses in the first chapter of Tom Jones, that, "there appears […] to be a great deal of human nature in it." How could a book that deals in real emotions and in "human nature" not be worth reading? Why should we not value a book just because it makes its readers cry? Does everything we read have to be high-toned philosophy? Obviously, we're on Fielding's side with this one.
Quote #6
The only supernatural agents which can in any manner be allowed to us moderns, are ghosts; but of these I would advise an author to be extremely sparing. These are indeed, like arsenic, and other dangerous drugs in physic, to be used with the utmost caution; nor would I advise the introduction of them at all in those works, or by those authors, to which, or to whom, a horse-laugh in the reader would be any great prejudice or mortification.
As for elves and fairies, and other such mummery, I purposely omit the mention of them, as I should be very unwilling to confine within any bounds those surprizing imaginations, for whose vast capacity the limits of human nature are too narrow; whose works are to be considered as a new creation; and who have consequently just right to do what they will with their own. (8.1.4-5)
Some parts of Tom Jones read less like a novel and more like a rant about What Literature Should Be Like. This is definitely one of those parts: the narrator stops the novel for a while to talk about ghosts, elves, and fairies and why they should never be in real works of art ever, ever, ever.
We're not surprised at Fielding's anti-elf policy, since he keeps emphasizing that his novel is about "human nature" (emphasis on the "human"). But it does raise another question, which is: what exactly is literature for? Obviously, this question is huge, and we don't want to get too philosophical. It's just that Fielding gives us this list of do's-and-don'ts for novel writing. Having a set of guidelines implies that there is something specific that the novel can achieve or accomplish if it follows these rules. Do you think that there is something in particular that novels should do? Or are they purely entertaining? Are novels supposed to teach us something about life? About other people? What's the end game here?