Episode 55: Joseph Andrews

Friend of the pod David Diamond visits us to talk about Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) and join in Tristan and Katie’s nefarious plot to turn Megan into an eighteenth-centuryist. David is assistant professor of English at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, a scholar of religion and literature, and a Fielding expert. We discuss the relationship between Calvinist thought and novelistic character, how Joseph Andrews has pretty good class AND gender politics (especially for the time), and why eighteenth-century literature is so raunchy. We also manage a few dunks on Samuel Richardson and that asshole Colley Cibber, and Katie discovers that Joey Andrews is a Jersey guy.

We read the Oxford edition edited by Douglas Brooks-Davies and Martin C. Battestin with an introduction by Thomas Keymer. For more on Fielding, theology, and secularism, we highly recommend David’s essay “Secular Fielding,” published in ELH: English Literary History in 2018.

Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at [email protected]. Find David on Twitter @david_m_diamond, Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.