Henry Flelding`s posthumously published Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon ments close study because it provides a valuable crystallization of the novelist`s most heartfelt philosophies and it contains further elucidation of how Fielding constructed his na...
Henry Flelding`s posthumously published Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon ments close study because it provides a valuable crystallization of the novelist`s most heartfelt philosophies and it contains further elucidation of how Fielding constructed his narratives, methods which helped make the novel one of the major modern literary forms. While travelogues were a popular literary form during the eighteenth century, the Journal is rather unique. Flelding never planned to write a travel diary when he set off for Portugal and the fact that the Preface and Introduction in the Journal, containing his criticism of the conventional travel-narrative form and his statement of purpose, were written after he had arrived in Lisbon, forces consideration both of Fielding`s creation of a narrative persona, and of his ability to instruct while delighting. Flelding consistently referred to his novels as histories, he continually undercuts the need for accurate chronology or detailed presentation. Thus, while trivial incidences are omitted to avoid alienating his audience, Flelding allowed himself to record impressions and observahons as a form of history. Although Fielding, overtly historicizes, there is the sense that for him history is always subjective representation. On the other hand, the Journal forces the reader to experience the frustration of human effort to arrive safely at a meaningful end. So, the Journal may be read as allegory in that the travelogue gives an overall sense of stasis in life, broken up now and again by moderate progress and irritating rejection, but Fielding the man, deathly in but comic nonetheless, keeps emerging in the course of the Journal to give a sense of reality. In spite of the chaos surrounding him, Fielding provides order, frames things in such a manner that by the time we arrive at the end of the Journal, we recognize that Fielding is at the end of his life. Therefore, what began as an exercise in fighting off ennui eventually became a unified exposition, replete with all the narrative strategies typically employed by Flelding.