Mapping Tom’s Journey
Friends and readers,
I bring together in one place my essay-blogs on the extraordinary learning journey I took with a group of older retired people at the Oscher Institute of Life-long Learning (attached to American University in DC) when we read and discussed Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. I was asked by a few people here on my two blogs to provide what I could of the lectures and class discussions, what we learned from reading the book that was relevant to us today. I found I could do this coherently by providing summaries of the phases of the books and the essays and topics and inexplicable cruxes we came across as we went through the book.
Glastonbury Tor, Somerset
We began with a syllabus
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones: a fall syllabus
1. We moved onto Fielding’s life and career and some ways in which the novel does not answer the expectations of 20th and 21st century readers:
Fielding’s life and obstacles to enjoyment
2. We covered a history of reading and commentary; how money worked in the era, and the relationship of sex and sheer survival in the era (“commerce”):
Lady Bellaston (Joan Greenwood) and Lord Fellamar (David Tomlinson) (1963 Richardson/Osborne Tom Jones)
A history of reading the novel, its presentation of money in relationship to sex
3. We then approached specific historical topics still relevant to us today:
Poaching, gamekeepers and injustice; Jacobites, superstition/discontent and Culloden
Peter Watkin’s 1964 documentary of Culloden
Sophia Western (Samantha Morton) and Honor, her maid (Kathy Burke) setting forth (1997 BBC Tom Jones)
4. Tom Jones on the road
An allusive text, filled with sex; gypsies, Punch and Judy, & The Provok’d Husband
Tom (Albert Finney) and Lady Bellaston at the masquerade (1963 Tom Jones)
5. Tom Jones the last 3rd: conclusion out of London
Sexual violence against women, libertinism; Hamlet and a history of the novel
Last, written much earlier: defending the 1997 mini-series
Affectionately dedicated to Mr Fielding
The film particularly effective when capturing the intersections of plot and narrator
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
I have now bookmarked all the posts on TJ. I will take my iPad and the book with me to Wales. I am keen to read it and refer to these blogs as I do. It’s a fine resource for anyone wanting to read TJ with understanding. Thanks for sharing this work Ellen.
Clare
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