SOURCE: Rothstein, Eric. “The Framework of Shamela.” ELH 35, no. 3 (September 1968): 381-402.

In the following essay, Rothstein shows how the framework of Shamela, beginning with the prefatory material, sustains the burlesque of the novel's action and satirizes English social, political, and religious life.

Fielding, in his prudence, did not let his ward Shamela go out to make her literary fortune alone. Her letters appeared with three epistolary chaperons, three addresses that are variants of her own correspondence. First, we have the letter of dedication from Conny Keyber to “Miss Fanny, & c.”; next, two letters to the Editor, “puffs” of the novel; finally, a pair of letters between Parsons Tickletext and Oliver, the one a praise of Pamela and the other an answer that denounces Pamela as a moral and literal fraud and that produces the genuine correspondence of Shamela. These three addresses seem to contain a puzzling contradiction. While...