Tom Jones

Tom  Jones as a comic epic with mock-heroic invocations and descriptions scattered throughout the novel. But the comic and 'mock' elements with an underlying  irony serve an important artistic purpose. It enables Fielding to make certain points about society, to deflate certain kinds of pretensions, to communicate an intense social concern between the 'high' and the 'low' sections of society which makes it a highly topical novel to this day. At the same time; it is a book of vitality, hilarity and charm which is common with his earlier classic, Joseph Andrews and his numerous  plays which he called 'farces'. The novel is centred around Tom Jones a lusty, passionate,  highly sexed young man, as well as impulsively generous and easily moved by others' sufferings. Tom Jones is thrown out of the home of his foster father and hits the road  where he has numerous adventures that reflect the moral complexities of the novel.