ABSTRACT
Readers expecting the ironic didacticism of the genial narrator of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones to guide them through the comic adventures of a female protagonist were disappointed by the melancholic aura of Amelia. Apart from the shift from the courtship plot to a story about married life, Amelia seems a strange piece of the Fielding canon on account of an apparent loss of authorial control and a change in tone. The narrator's stance regarding cultural, moral, and religious issues, made explicit in previous novels, is fairly cryptic in this one. The dramatic allusions contained in Amelia, and even the theme of choice, establish bridges with the theatre of Fielding's day that help explain and do away with much of this novel's putative rarity. Perhaps no other character has more explicit theatrical resonances as Amelia's husband, whose very name is strongly suggestive of drama, particularly of the tragic kind.
