This paper aims at the study of Henry Fielding's use of word-play in his famous novel Joseph Andrews. This novel is one of the most important novels of the 18th century English literature.
Because of its importance, the novel is being taught for students of English literature in most English departments in universities. Fielding, in the preface to his novel, identifies it as a ' comic epic romance in prose ' the thing which means that there is a mixing of comedy and seriousness using a new language which is the language of prose. The author uses a special type of comedy which he calls ' burlesque ' or ' the ludicrous ' or ' the ridiculous '.
The main source of this comedy, according to him, is ' affectation ' and this affectation results out of one of two causes which are ' vanity ' or ' hypocrisy '. Fielding employs four methods in presenting his comedy like the confusion between characters, the imitation of the style of the ancients, borrowing similes from the ancients, and the funny and strange physical description of the evil characters. Most of these methods depend on the use of words.
There is a lot of word-play where the author uses certain words whose literal meanings are exactly the opposite of the dictionary meanings. This kind of use of words makes the reader unable to understand or comprehend what the author tries to say. It leads to a kind of vagueness or ambiguity, or even misunderstanding. This study aims at solving such problems by studying a large number of examples taken from the text and which are explained by giving the real intended meanings of these words or phrases. It is hoped that this study is going to be beneficial to the readers or even to the students who have this novel in their prescribed courses.
Al-Baath University Journal.
2013.
Word-play in Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews
Students
Teachers
Graduates
Faculties
