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Jonathan Wild (Oxford World's Classics)
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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Author: Henry Fielding
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.36
You Save: $ 2.59 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Author: Henry Fielding
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Average Customer Rating:
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Jonathan Wild (Oxford World's Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.5
EAN: 9780192804082
ISBN: 0192804081
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2004-04-08
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.5
EAN: 9780192804082
ISBN: 0192804081
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2004-04-08
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Editorial Review of Jonathan Wild (Oxford World's Classics)
The real-life Jonathan Wild, gangland godfather and self-styled "Thieftaker General", controlled much of the London underworld until he was executed for his crimes in 1725. Even during his lifetime his achievements attracted attention; after his death balladeers sang of his exploits, and satirists made connections between his success and the triumph of corruption in high places. Fielding built on these narratives to produce one of the greatest sustained satires in the English language. Published in 1743, at a time when the modern novel had yet to establish itself as a fixed literary form, Jonathan Wild is at the same time a brilliant black comedy, an incisive political satire, and a profoundly serious exploration of human "greatness" and "goodness", as relevant today as it ever was.
Customer Reviews of Jonathan Wild (Oxford World's Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: What a wolf is in a sheepfold, a great man is in society
Review: For Henry Fielding, 'great men', like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and 'great rogues', like Jonathan Wild, are synonymous terms. Greatness consists in bringing all manners of mischief on mankind.
Alexander the Great overran a whole empire with fire and sword, pillaging, sacking, burning, enslaving and destroying millions of his fellow creatures. Julius Caesar abolished the republican liberties of his country in order to take the power into his own hands.
At the opposite side of the spectrum, Jonathan Wild was a great prig (pick-pocket), cheating the very tools who were his instruments to cheat others: 'I had rather stand at the summit of a dunghill, than at the bottom of a hill in paradise.'
For Henry Fielding, greatness rimes with ambition, lust, avarice, rapaciousness, hypocrisy, power, pride, insolence, insatiability, 'a privilege to kill, a strong temptation to do bravely ill'. Greatness is 'playing with the passions of men, to work one's own purposes out of the jealousies and apprehensions to create those great arts which the vulgar call treachery, dissembling, promising, lying, falshood, summed up in the collective name of POLLITRICKS.'
And all that for what? Not for the general good of society, but for the power and the glory of the great man himself, for the satisfaction of his vices.
The fact that 'he is hated and detested by all mankind makes him inwardly satisfied. Otherwise, why should he stand at the head of a multitude of prigs, called an army, in order to molest his neighbours, to introduce rape, rapine, bloodshed and every kind of misery on his own species, to desire maliciously to rob those subjects, to reduce them to an absolute dependence on his own will, to betray the interest of his fellow-subjects, of his brethren.'
Jonathan Wild: 'I ought rather weep with Alexander, that I have ruined not more.'
Another target of the author are the hypocritical priests: 'Life is sweet, I had rather live to eternity ... so many wallow in wealth and preferment.'
He insults the ordinary, who attends to the spiritual needs of condemned criminals; 'You are more unmerciful to me than the Judge.'
Henry Fielding's forceful diatribe against all conquerers, tyrants, pollitrickers, and vicious 'prigs' still sounds extremely modern.
He blames the majority of mankind to continue to praise the said great men.
But, 'there are still some, who view these great men with a malignant eye and dare affirm that these great men are always the most pernicious and generally the most wretched and truly contemptible of all works of creation.'
This book is a ferocious and, unfortunately, still very topical satire.
A must read.
Review Summary: What a wolf is in a sheepfold, a great man is in society
Review: For Henry Fielding, 'great men', like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and 'great rogues', like Jonathan Wild, are synonymous terms. Greatness consists in bringing all manners of mischief on mankind.
Alexander the Great overran a whole empire with fire and sword, pillaging, sacking, burning, enslaving and destroying millions of his fellow creatures. Julius Caesar abolished the republican liberties of his country in order to take the power into his own hands.
At the opposite side of the spectrum, Jonathan Wild was a great prig (pick-pocket), cheating the very tools who were his instruments to cheat others: 'I had rather stand at the summit of a dunghill, than at the bottom of a hill in paradise.'
For Henry Fielding, greatness rimes with ambition, lust, avarice, rapaciousness, hypocrisy, power, pride, insolence, insatiability, 'a privilege to kill, a strong temptation to do bravely ill'. Greatness is 'playing with the passions of men, to work one's own purposes out of the jealousies and apprehensions to create those great arts which the vulgar call treachery, dissembling, promising, lying, falshood, summed up in the collective name of POLLITRICKS.'
And all that for what? Not for the general good of society, but for the power and the glory of the great man himself, for the satisfaction of his vices.
The fact that 'he is hated and detested by all mankind makes him inwardly satisfied. Otherwise, why should he stand at the head of a multitude of prigs, called an army, in order to molest his neighbours, to introduce rape, rapine, bloodshed and every kind of misery on his own species, to desire maliciously to rob those subjects, to reduce them to an absolute dependence on his own will, to betray the interest of his fellow-subjects, of his brethren.'
Jonathan Wild: 'I ought rather weep with Alexander, that I have ruined not more.'
Another target of the author are the hypocritical priests: 'Life is sweet, I had rather live to eternity ... so many wallow in wealth and preferment.'
He insults the ordinary, who attends to the spiritual needs of condemned criminals; 'You are more unmerciful to me than the Judge.'
Henry Fielding's forceful diatribe against all conquerers, tyrants, pollitrickers, and vicious 'prigs' still sounds extremely modern.
He blames the majority of mankind to continue to praise the said great men.
But, 'there are still some, who view these great men with a malignant eye and dare affirm that these great men are always the most pernicious and generally the most wretched and truly contemptible of all works of creation.'
This book is a ferocious and, unfortunately, still very topical satire.
A must read.