Henry Fielding의 Tom Jones 연구 : Irony의 의의와 한계를 중심으로 = Irony in Tom Jones

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This thesis proposes to study irony in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones as presenting the social stability of its age ans as reflecting a critical stage of novel genre itself.
To show panorama of human nature Fielding adopts a discursive and complex plot but it keeps unity and integration rather than disintegration by means of exteral technique of irony: instructive patterning of the plot, direct editorial comment and authorial omni-presence. The structural design of Tom Jones controlled by irony admirably expresses the neoclassical faith in balance, proportion and reciprocity.
To be genuinely demicratic, Fielding's theory presupposes proof of human equality, a standard shared by himself and everyone else, the basis of community. It means also that by means of irony Fielding has been able to create a reader wise and critical enugh to create the book he reads.
As the novel emerges consciously and unconsciously as a genre that is both critical ans self-critical, irony and self-parody becomes the unique and essential mode of it. But Fieldig's inory based on static vision toward complex and dynamic reality does not amount to the level of deep and inclusive realism. It faithfully belongs and serves to the Augustan ideology of security and compromise, so Tom Jones is not open to the possibility of genuine realism, namely, to the dialogic interrelationship between language and reality of given era.