humourous novel

Joseph Andrews, novel by Henry Fielding, published in 1742. It was written as a reaction against Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740). Fielding portrayed Joseph Andrews as the brother of Pamela Andrews, the heroine of Richardson’s novel. Described on the title page as “Written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote,” Joseph Andrews begins as a burlesque of Pamela, but the parodic intention of the novel soon becomes secondary, and it develops into a masterpiece of sustained irony and social criticism. At its centre is Parson Adams, one of the great comic figures of literature. Joseph and the parson have a series of adventures, in all of which they manage to expose the hypocrisy and affectation of others through their own innocence and guilelessness.