Simon Varey s Joseph Andrews: A Satire of
Modern Times emphasizes the novels satire of
the bourgeois mentality and reveals the cultural
context from which it emerged. Varey stresses
the novelist's concerns with the encroaching
materialism of English society, and his study's
themes follow those of the novel itself; popular
culture, fashion, class, sex, violence, religion,
and money. Varey's work offers a new approach
to Joseph Andrews by explicating Fielding's
humor in terms of the novel's own time and by
discussing the role of politics in the daily life of
the eighteenth-century citizen. Moreover, Varey
has provided a detailed glossary of terms that
will prove useful to students of Fielding who are
not versed in the political and cidtural vocabulary
of the age.