Research Paper on:
Clergy in Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding

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Rewarded, which achieved popular acclaim two years earlier. Fielding exploited the form of satire, always popular throughout the history of English literature, to its full comical advantage, poking fun  at conventional morality, as well as eighteenth-century political and legal institutions. For Fielding, there were no literary "sacred cows," and this included his rather irreverent presentation of the clergy,  which were reflected in the characterizations of Parson Adams, Parson Barnabas, Parson Trulliber, and a briefly-featured Roman Catholic priest. Fielding seemed intent upon skewering, with his poison pen, the  holy Christian trinity of faith, hope, and charity. If ever there was a man who relied on little more than hope always springs eternal, it was Joseph Andrews frequent traveling  companion, Parson Abraham Adams. He was a Booby Hall clergyman who could quote freely from Latin and ancient Greek scriptures (with Aeschylus being his personal favorite), but possessed little  in the way of common sense or worldly sophistication. In Book I, Chapter 3, Fielding described Adams as, "His Virtue and his other Qualifications, as they rendered him equal  to his Office, so they made him an agreeable and valuable Companion, and had so much endeared and well recommended him to a Bishop, that at the Age of Fifty,  he was provided with a handsome Income of twenty-three Pounds a Year; which however, he could not make any great Figure with: because he lived in a dear Country, and  was a little encumbered with a Wife and six Children" (Joseph Andrews). This was a sarcastic reference to the meager salary a clergyman was expected to live on.  Virtue alone didnt pay the bills, especially for a Parson who had a wife and six children to support. This is why Parson Adams had to devote much of