Overview

Using close rhetorical analysis, Smith argues that Fielding's narrative method in Tom Jones creates an ironic tension between the intrusive narrator and the highly artificial plot. Fielding's narrator employs a rhetoric of deception to maintain the central secret of Tom's birth around which his plot is structured. Such an ironic narrative method ultimately reveals the reader's dependence on conventional assumptions in interpretation and argues for epistemological prudence. Smith questions conventional readings of Tom Jones and shows Fielding's comic novel to be both darker and more philosophical than generally assumed.

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The Author: J.F. Smith is currently an assistant professor of English at Arkansas State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and both his M.A. and B.A. form Louisiana State University. He has served in different editorial positions for several periodicals, and he has also published articles on Milton, Boswell, and James.

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