ABSTRACT

In the novels of Henry Fielding, music is mentioned no more than a social historian might expect: an occasional reference, one theme amongst many. The impetus for Fielding's initial fiction, Samuel Richardson's first novel Pamela, similarly lacks any particular interest in music. The reasons for Richardson's fixation with music throughout Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison relate to structural aspects of the novel. Clarissa's musical aptitude is not simply an index of her conventional femininity, but of her capacity — like that of the editor of her letters — to generate virtue from what Richardson in his Preface describes as 'collateral incidents'. The physician John Gregory wrote in 1763 that: The influence of Music over the Mind is perhaps greater than that of any of the fine arts. It is capable of raising and soothing every passion and emotion of the Soul.