SOURCE: Rivero, Albert J. “Pamela/Shamela/Joseph Andrews: Henry Fielding and the Duplicities of Representation.” In Augustan Subjects: Essays in Honor of Martin C. Battestin, edited by Albert J. Rivero, pp. 207-28. Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Rivero discusses Fielding's concerns with representation, authority, and authenticity in Shamela, which the novelist explores more fully in Joseph Andrews.

The title page of Joseph Andrews indicates that the work we are about to read is “Written in Imitation of The Manner of CERVANTES, Author of Don Quixote.”¹ This is an interesting acknowledgment of debt, one made especially tantalizing by the absence of the name of the author of this imitation. Fielding's first published full-length novel is not acknowledged by its own author but “authorized” by the author of a book whose avowed purpose is the questioning of the authority of authors. That authority, Cervantes...