Henry Fielding, the Scriblerians, and the Consumption of Ancient Epic

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Henry Fielding was always keen to stress that his novels were modelled on classical epic. Equally, he was fascinated by - and wrote at length about - the fact that they were objects to be consumed. He recognised that he wrote in an age when an author had to consider himself as a businessman, catering to a discerning clientele. In describing his work, he alludes (sometimes within the same sentence) both to Homeric epic and to cookery books.Critics have not realised how strange it was for him simultaneously to stress his work's classical origins and its eventual consumption. Fielding wrote in the shadow of a group of authors known as the 'Scriblerians' - foremost among them Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and Alexander Pope. Early in his career, he even signed himself 'Scriblerus Secundus'. But Swift, Gay, and Pope had all recoiled from the idea that classical literature might be subject to the values of the marketplace. Pope, for example, published a 'Receipt to Make an Epick Poem', in which he poured scorn on the idea that the same set of rules might apply to cookery and literature.This project examines the way in which Fielding's reading of classical literature draws on those of the previous generation of writers. It will examine the extent to which Fielding rejects the literary manifesto of Swift, Gay, and Pope. Drawing on a wide variety of sources (including works of classical scholarship and eighteenth-century cookery writing), it will offer a fuller picture than has previously been available of Fielding's practice as a novelist, and of his theory of the novel. It will build on exciting recent work in the field of classical reception, establishing the influence of ancient literature on the early novel. It will also offer a portrait of the way in which literature was consumed in the first half of the eighteenth century.