This passage provides analysis of chapters 4-6 of Book III in Joseph Andrews. It summarizes: 1) Mr. Adams and Joseph debate the origins of morality, with Adams believing it comes from external conditioning and Joseph arguing both innate virtue and vice exist. 2) Joseph demonstrates a more insightful understanding of human nature, surpassing Adams and suggesting he may take a more central role in the novel. 3) A scene where Adams is attacked by hunting dogs is analyzed, with some finding it goes too far but it allows sympathy for Adams to return after recent exposures. 4) Fielding uses mock-epic language to describe the scene comically and frame the violence, imparting narratorial control

1. Book III, Chapters IV through VI.
Analysis.
Wilson's biography prompts Mr. Adams and Joseph to have a nature-versusnurture debate about how men acquire moral insight; the ensuing exchange
provides further evidence both of Adams's faulty ideas about human nature and of
Joseph's increasing shrewdness and confidence. Adams, it appears, has some
unsound notions regarding the origins of virtue and vice: in declaring public
schools "the Nurseries of all Vice and Immorality," he implies that moral
character, for good or ill, derives from external conditioning, so that a proper
moral education entails sheltering boys from depravity and keeping them forever
"in Innocence and Ignorance." Such a theory hardly has room for the doctrine of
Original Sin; one thing it can accommodate, however, is Mr. Adams's high opinion
of his own skill and importance as a pedagogue: as Fielding observes, Adams's
emphasis on the moral significance of education owes much to his belief in the
schoolmaster as "the greatest Character in the World, and himself as the greatest
of Schoolmasters." As if this reference to the parson's vanity were not enough to
render his arguments suspect, Homer Goldberg points out a discrepancy between
Adams's theory and his practice: whereas Adams here professes to consider the
world at large to be corrupt in the main, when he himself is abroad in the world he
demonstrably expects that its inhabitants will be as innocent and ignorant as the
most sheltered private-school boy or as Adams himself.
Joseph propounds a more cogent theory of moral education and in the process
shows himself to have a better command than his mentor of some of the most
important themes of the novel. Fundamentally, Joseph rejects Adams's premise of
the universality of original innocence, suggesting instead that while some boys are
born with basically virtuous natures, others are naturally vicious. External factors,
including education, exert only limited influence on the development of moral
character, for "if a Boy be of a mischievous wicked inclination, no School, tho' ever
so private, will ever make him good; on the contrary, if he be of a righteous
Temper, you may trust him to London, or wherever else you please, he will be in
no danger of being corrupted." Joseph himself, having emerged immaculate from
the cesspool of London, is Exhibit A in support of this argument; nor does the case
of Wilson, who eventually transcended his corrupt environment (and after all had
left his public school early), at all disprove it. Thus, having previously excelled
only in commonsensical matters, Joseph suddenly evinces superior insight into
human nature; his ability to overshadow the parson in the parson's own specialty,
namely education and moral philosophy, suggests that Fielding may be priming
him to retake center stage, which Adams has occupied since his entrance late in
Book I.
Joseph is not infallible, however, and ensuing events belie his assertion that a
good action defies ridicule: the bizarre Squire whose hunting dogs harass Adams
so relishes "everything ridiculous, odious, and absurd in his own Species" that he
does not hesitate to "turn even Virtue and Wisdom themselves to Ridicule."
Readers have often criticized the scene in which the pack of hounds dismantles
the "poor innocent" hare and then turns its attentions to the poor innocent parson,
on the grounds that the slapstick action goes beyond comedy to cruelty. Certainly

2. the Hunter of Men is barbaric in his valuation of dogs above humans and, later, in
his pleasure in subjecting Adams to a series of nasty practical jokes, and it may be
tempting to conclude that Fielding, insofar as he expects the reader to laugh along
with the Hunter of Men, has descended to barbarism as well. What seems more
likely, however, is that Fielding did not in fact intend for the dogs' attack on
Adams to be humorous in itself (though whether it is humorous in the manner of
its telling is a separate issue, on which see more below); rather, the episode
allows Adams to recover some of the sympathy that he forfeited during the recent
exposures of his vanity and naïveté. If Adams's characteristic foible, usually
endearing but recently exasperating, has been his willingness to become a dupe
and victim of the vicious world, here the vicious world victimizes him so cruelly
that the reader's sympathies cannot help but return to him. As Goldberg puts it,
"Here the world's baiting of Adams, which began with his entrance into the
Dragon Inn, is carried to its savage extreme." The Hunter of Men exemplifies the
vices of the world because, unlike most of the people who have victimized Adams
and his companions, he is not self-interested in the ordinary way; his pleasure,
like that of the false-promising Squire (only more darkly and violently), is to
perpetrate mischief for its own sake.
Fielding tempers the unpleasantness of the incident, however, by rendering it in
humorous or burlesque diction. The battle with the hounds, in fact, constitutes the
lengthiest application of mock-epic diction in the entire novel; it spoofs
elaborately a number of conventions of epic combat, including the invocation of
the Muse ("who presidest over Biography"), the Homeric epithet ("the Plain, the
young, the gay, the brave Joseph Andrews"), the minute description of the hero's
weapon ("It was a Cudgel of mighty Strength and wonderful Art," etc.), the brief
biographies of fallen warriors ("Ringwood the best Hound that ever pursued a
Hare, . . . Fairmaid, a Bitch which Mr. John Temple had bred up in his House,"
etc.), and, almost, the epic simile ("Reader, we would make a Simile on this
Occasion, but for two Reasons . . ."). All of this ironical classicism exemplifies the
Preface's definition of "burlesque" as "appropriating the Manners of the highest to
the lowest," and it does so more dramatically than does any other burlesque
passage in the novel. Whereas a more conventional burlesque passage would
describe a lowly human brawl in terms appropriate to heroic combatants (the
hog's-blood battle is a good example of this approach), the battle with the hounds
takes burlesque to another level by using the same heroic terms to describe subhuman combatants, a pack of dogs.
One of the effects of this verbal humor is to impart a sense of narratorial
oversight: the counterintuitively funny presentation of violent actions calls
attention to Fielding's ability to frame his tale, modulating his own and the
reader's reactions to it, and thereby reminds us that all events are under the
novelist's control. In turn, the use of mock-epic diction implies the presence of a
benevolent designer, with Fielding functioning as a substitute deity who watches
over his characters even when they seem to be in the most danger. Aside from
being funny, then, Fielding's burlesque diction fits violent events into a comic
frame and reassures the reader that, notwithstanding the shocking depravity on
display in this scene, providence has not ceased to operate.
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