ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -His greatest work is The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), a meticulous comic novel with elements of the picaresque and the Bildungsroman, telling a convoluted, hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune.

Detailed explanation-2: -Tom Jones is one of the earliest English novels, and was hugely popular when it was first published in 1749. It tells the story of the foundling Tom and his journey towards adulthood and marriage.

Detailed explanation-3: -Tom Jones, like its predecessor, Joseph Andrews, is constructed around a romance plot. Squire Allworthy suspects that the infant whom he adopts and names Tom Jones is the illegitimate child of his servant Jenny Jones. When Tom is a young man, he falls in love with Sophia Western, his beautiful and virtuous neighbour.

Detailed explanation-4: -Tom Jones gives a vivid picture of the working of law and justice in the England of Fielding’s days. It expresses the defective system of law and court. The judge was a law unto himself. Most of the judges were partial in their judgments and were affected by various factors, personal as well as impersonal.