Friend of the pod David Diamond visits us to talk about Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) and join in Tristan and Katie’s nefarious plot to turn Megan into an eighteenth-centuryist. David is assistant professor of English at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, a scholar of religion and literature, and a Fielding expert. We discuss the relationship between Calvinist thought and novelistic character, how Joseph Andrews has pretty good class AND gender politics (especially for the time), and why eighteenth-century literature is so raunchy. We also manage a few dunks on Samuel Richardson and that asshole Colley Cibber, and Katie discovers that Joey Andrews is a Jersey guy.

We read the Oxford edition edited by Douglas Brooks-Davies and Martin C. Battestin with an introduction by Thomas Keymer. For more on Fielding, theology, and secularism, we highly recommend David’s essay “Secular Fielding,” published in ELH: English Literary History in 2018.

Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at [email protected]. Find David on Twitter @david_m_diamond, Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.