SOURCE: Olivier, Theo. “‘Pamela’ and ‘Shamela’: A Reassessment.” English Studies in Africa: A Journal of the Humanities 17, no. 2 (September 1974): 59-70.

In the following essay, Olivier maintains that Fielding's purpose in Shamela was not much different from that of Samuel Richardson in Pamela, in that both attempt to entertain, but do so by different means.

All fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side. 

(Pope, Essay on Criticism)

To approach a comparison between Richardson and Fielding today poses some rather formidable problems, not the least that of saying anything original in the perspective of cumulative scholarly pronouncement. The topic is an old one which has had the benefit, as a motivating force, of a convenient divergence in personality between the two writers—so much so indeed that it seems strange that normally suspicious critics and scholars have not noticed the trap of...