Fielding, Aristotele e l’orgoglio della finzione

Abstract

This contribution looks at Fielding’s theory of the novel through Aristotle’s Poetics. Three sources for Fielding’s thought around Poetic’s categories are identified (Addison, Dryden, Dacier), and then the elements which allow Fielding to inscribe his “literary province” into Aristotelian “poetry”, while almost all his predecessors (from Rabelaist to Defoe) looked at the other pole of the dichotomy, “history”. Three causes for such relocation of the novel are identified: the new readers; the reconceptualization of verisimilitude as pure probability; the birth of modern hermeneutics and aesthetics, which offer a more flexible interpretative space. Such space allows a more nuanced interpretation, which is more useful to understand modern fictional worlds.