henry fielding defined novel as comic epic poem in prose.
henry fielding defined novel as comic epic poem in prose.
who defined novel as comic epic poem in prose?
henry fielding
joseph andrews









































joseph andrews, or the history of the adventures of joseph andrews and of his friend mr. abraham adams, was the first published full-length novel of the english author henry fielding, and indeed among the first novels in the english language. published in 1742 and defined by fielding as a "comic epic poem in prose", it is the story of a good-natured footman's adventures on the road home from london with his friend and mentor, the absent-minded parson abraham adams.









































section::::inspirations.
joseph andrews
the impetus for the novel, as fielding claims in the preface, is the establishment of a genre of writing "which i do not remember to have been hitherto attempted in our language", defined as the "comic epic-poem in prose": a work of prose fiction, epic in length and variety of incident and character, in the hypothetical spirit of homer's lost (and possibly apocryphal) comic poem "margites". he dissociates his fiction from the scandal-memoir and the contemporary novel. book iii describes the work as biography.
joseph andrews