Henry Fielding and the Narration of Providence, Divine Design and the Incursions of Evil (Innbundet (stive permer))

RICHARD ROSENGARTEN is Dean and Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

This text analyzes the fate in 18th century England of the Augustinian tradition of the providential design of history. At this time the retrospective form of literary narrative (also known as "the rise of the English novel") flourished, particularly in the novels of Henry Fielding. Through his "historian" narrators, Fielding presents to the reader a sense of narrative ending that explores, with great power of poetic penetration, the claims humans can and cannot make, even retrospectively, for the realization of the divine design.

Principled Diffidence: Religion, the Narrating of Providence, and the Novels of Henry Fielding From this World to the Next: Poetic Justice and Deism Providence Victorious: Narrative Viewpoint in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones Providence Displaced: The Recourse to the Final Judgement in Amelia The Binding of Providential Narrative: Fielding, Genesis 22, and the Eighteenth-Century Religious Sensibility