A Journey from This World to the Next and The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (The World's Classics)
by Henry Fielding
On This Page
Description
Whether the ensuing pages were really the dream or vision of some very pious and holy person; or whether they were really written in the other world, and sent back to this, which is the opinion of many (though I think too much inclining to superstition); or lastly, whether, as infinitely the greatest part imagine, they were really the production of some choice inhabitant of New Bethlehem, is not necessary nor easy to determine. It will be abundantly sufficient if I give the reader an account show more by what means they came into my possession. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
These are two unlike essays published in one volume. _A Journey From This World to the Next_ is a satire on society in the form of a supposed travelogue of the afterlife. The protagonist discovers that some souls are damned and sent immediately to Hell, souls who have lived a good life are admitted to the Elysian Fields, and those who need to improve are given additional incarnations. The satire is provided by the account of Julian the Apostate, who incarnates repeatedly in every station of life. The commentary on the life of courtiers and rulers is particularly pointed, and the last life given, that of Anne Boleyn, makes the precarious nature of the favor of the great especially clear.
_The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_ is an account show more of Fieldings last trip, an effort to regain his health by moving to the better climate afforded by Lisbon. Its main interest for the modern reader is to make clear the tedium, discomfort and unpredictability of travel by sailing ship. It takes the party over a month just to escape the coast of England. Part of this time is spent in lodgings on the Isle of Wight as they await favorable winds. Greedy landladies, supply boats determined to get the most out of every traveler and an impatient and unpredictable Captain make the voyage more than usually unpleasant for the dying Fielding--who nevertheless wrote to earn money for his family. show less
_The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_ is an account show more of Fieldings last trip, an effort to regain his health by moving to the better climate afforded by Lisbon. Its main interest for the modern reader is to make clear the tedium, discomfort and unpredictability of travel by sailing ship. It takes the party over a month just to escape the coast of England. Part of this time is spent in lodgings on the Isle of Wight as they await favorable winds. Greedy landladies, supply boats determined to get the most out of every traveler and an impatient and unpredictable Captain make the voyage more than usually unpleasant for the dying Fielding--who nevertheless wrote to earn money for his family. show less
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
261+ Works 15,871 Members
Henry Fielding, 1707 - 1754 A succcessful playwright in his twenties, Henry Fielding turned to the study of law and then to journalism, fiction, and a judgeship after his Historical Register, a political satire on the Walpole government, contributed to the censorship of plays that put him out of business. As an impoverished member of the upper show more classes, he knew the country squires and the town nobility; as a successful young playwright, the London jet set; as a judge at the center of London, the city's thieves, swindlers, petty officials, shopkeepers, and vagabonds. As a political journalist (editor-author of The Champion, 1739-1741; The True Patriot, 1745-1746; The Jacobite's Journal, 1747-1748; The Covent-Garden Journal, 1752), he participated in argument and intrigue over everything from London elections to national policy. He knowledgeably attacked and defended a range of politicians, from ward heelers to the Prince of Wales. When Fielding undertook writing prose fiction to ridicule the simple morality of Pamela by Samuel Richardson, he first wrote the hilarious burlesque Shamela (1741). However, he soon found himself considering all the forces working on humans, and in Joseph Andrews (1742) (centering on his invented brother of Pamela), he played with the patterns of Homer, the Bible, and Cervantes to create what he called "a comic epic poem in prose." His preface describing this new art form is one of the major documents in literary criticism of the novel. Jonathan Wild, a fictional rogue biography of a year later, plays heavily with ironic techniques that leave unsettled Fielding's great and recurring theme: the difficulty of uniting goodness, or an outflowing love of others, with prudence in a world where corrupted institutions support divisive pride rather than harmony and self-fulfillment. In his masterpiece Tom Jones (1749), Fielding not only faces this issue persuasively but also shows for the first time the possibility of bringing a whole world into an artistic unity, as his model Homer had done in verse. Fielding develops a coherent and centered sequence of events-something Congreve had done casually on a small scale in Incognita 60 years before. In addition he also relates the plot organically to character and theme, by which he gives us a vision of the archetypal good person (Tom) on a journey toward understanding. Every act by every character in the book reflects the special and typical psychology of that character and the proper moral response. In Tom Jones, Fielding affirms the existence of an order under the surface of chaos. In his last novel, Amelia (1751), which realistically examines the misery of London, he can find nothing reliable except the prudent good heart, and that only if its possessor escapes into the country. Fielding based the title character on his second wife, with whom he was deeply in love. However, ill himself, still saddened by the deaths of his intensely loved first wife and daughter, and depressed by a London magistrate's endless toil against corruption, Fielding saw little hope for goodness in that novel or in his informal Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755). Shortly after traveling to Lisbon for his health, Fielding died at the age of 47, having proved to his contemporaries and successors that the lowly novel was capable of the richest achievements of art. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- A journey from this world to the next ; The journal of a voyage to Lisbon
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 33
- Popularity
- 856,401
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.75)
- Languages
- English, Finnish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
