James E. Evans

Dr. Evans’s research interests are in British literature and culture of the long eighteenth century (1650-1830), especially fiction and drama, but also comic forms, gender roles, and gambling. He is currently writing about comic drama in the 1770s, as well as Fielding's comic masterpiece Tom Jones.

There are 18 included publications by James E. Evans :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Blifil as Tartuffe: The Dialogic Comedy of Tom Jones 1990 4304 Many modern interpreters of Fielding's novels, reading his declaration in the Preface to Joseph Andrews that “a comic Romance is a comic Epic-Poem in Prose,” emphasize the epic or the romance as the basis of his achievement.1 Howeve...
Comedy and the “Tragic Complexion” of Tom Jones 1984 3353 Tony Richardson's 1963 film Tom Jones contains an image not explicitly authorized by Fielding?s novel: Tom, with a noose around his neck, being hanged. Fortuitously, he is rescued by Squire Western before gravity takes its toll. Although consi...
Comedy: An Annotated Bibliography of Theory and Criticism 1987 28970 From Plato to Umber-to Eco comedy has been a subject of perennial interest. In the 1980s there have even been two attempts, one scholarly and one fictional, to recreate the "lost" book on comedy by Plato's pupil Aristotle: by Richard Janko in Aris...
"the Dullissimo Maccaroni": Masculinities in She Stoops to conquer." 2011 7366 In act 4 of Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (1773), Charles Marlow suddenly discovers the deception practiced on him when he learns that Liberty Hall, Mr. Hardcastle’s house, is not an inn. His immediate response includes not only persona...
The English Lineage Of Diedrich Knickerbocker 1975 1952 The narrator of Washington Irving's A History of New York, an odd, inquisitive gentleman named Diedrich Knickerbocker, who allegedly disappeared in I809, leaving behind him the manuscript of this "only Authentic History of the Times that hat...
Evelina, the Rustic Girls of Congreve and Abington, and Surrogation in the 1770s 2011 2629 In the first volume of Evelina (1778), Frances Burney sends her protagonist to London theaters, among the numerous public venues that provide settings for this “Young Lady’s Entrance into the World.” Evelina attends several performances at the The...
Fielding, The Whole Duty of Man, Shamela, and Joseph Andrews. 1982 1079 In the years since the question of authorship was satisfactorily resolved, Shamela has received much attention. Few would now deny that Fielding's parody goes beyond its primary target, Pamela, to ridicule three other best sellers of 1740 and 1741- A...
'an Honest Scar Received in the Service of My Country': Lismahago's Colonial Perspective in Humphry Clinker. 2000 1212 When Matthew Bramble's expedition reaches Durham, his family encounters a character introduced as "a tall, meagure figure answering, with his horse, the description of Don Quixote mounted on Rozinante. While Lieutenant Obadiah Lismahago may appear qu...
An Inclusive Cultural History of Early Eighteenth-Century British Literature. 2001 1166 During the late twentieth century the recovery of texts by women authors was an important scholarly project in English studies, which also led to paperback editions and, more recently, hypertexts for instructional use. At my university, which is prob...
Mr. Review on the "Glorious" Tatler and the "Inimitable" Spectator 1986 1688 No other contemporary prose writer of comparable stature commented so often in print on the Tatler and the Spectator as Daniel Defoe. From June 1709 until June 1713 he discussed or mentioned them in twenty- five separate issues of his <...
Publication of the <i>Censor</i> 1983 747 BONAMY DOBREE in English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century 1700-1740 (Oxford, 1959), perpetuated an earlier error in periodical history by referring to the Censor as 'papers contributed to Mist's Weekly Journal, 1717' (p...
"a Sceane of Uttmost Vanity": the Spectacle of Gambling in Late Stuart Culture. 2002 4308 Restoration diarist John Evelyn describes a memorable occasion at court on Twelfth Night, 6 January 1662: This evening (according to costóme) his Majestie opned the Réveils of that night, by throwing the Dice himselfe, in the Privy Chamber, wher...
Sentimental Economies in The School for Scandal 2011 8455 Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal, which premiered on 8 May 1777, demonstrates a central fimction of eighteenth-century literary texts, as described by Mary Poovey: "to mediate value-that is, to help people understand the n...
The Social Design Of Fielding's Novels 1980 4123 During the last two decades we have received a "definitive" reading from two editors of the Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding to complement definitive editions of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. According to Martin C. Battes...
'The Splendour of Our Golden Age': The Duchess of Mazarin and Epicurean Voluptuousness in Late Stuart England 2012 2189 Writing at the end of Queen Anne's reign, Theophilus Lucas profiled only one woman in “Memoirs of the Lives, Intrigues, and Comical Adventures of the Most Famous Gamesters” (1714), a scandal-filled account spanning fifty years after the Restoration: ...
Tatler No. 260 and Tristram Shandy 1980 1018 Noses are prominent in Volumes III and IV of Tristram Shandy — Tristram's crushed nose, his great-grandfather's short nose, the stranger's attractive nose in "Slawkenbergius's Tale," and a "chapter of noses." Although Swift's bawdy use of ears...
Tristram as Critic: Momus's Glass vs. Hobby-Horse. 1971 1394 In the first volume of Tristram Shandy Tristram announces to his readers that he will draw his uncle Toby's character from his "hobby-horse" rather than with any "mechanical help" such as wind instruments, evacuations, the Pentagraph, or the "Camera....
The World According to Paul: Comedy and Theology in “Joseph Andrews” 1984 2342 ALTHOUGH THE CHRISTIAN CONTEXT of Fielding?s first novel and its comic techniques have been much discussed, I propose to combine these perspectives, to interpret the novel?s comedy through a biblical passage, I Corinthians 3: 18-19, which, given the ...