Nature and Purpose of Digression in Henry Fielding's Joseph AndrewsIt is perhaps a development of Henry Fielding's verbose writing style that he includes so many digressions in pages by Joseph Andrews. As an author, he is certainly not afraid to slow the pace of his narrative to develop a moral point, and while this very often takes the place of a paragraph or two within the main story, he occasionally devotes entire chapters to topics that are entirely unrelated to the development of the plot but which expose ethical or theological ideas linked to the themes of the text as a whole. Furthermore, at the beginning of the first three books, Fielding himself comments on certain aspects of the literary art, in digressions (perhaps prefaces would be a better word) which are fundamentally different in nature from all the others in that they explore ideas relevant to the construction of the book itself, rather than for its themes. They cover topics such as why the book was written, the benefits of dividing a book into chapters, and the wonders of biography as a literary form; and can almost be seen as an explanation by the author of why he wrote the book the way he did, rather than providing a development of the themes of the text itself. Something that holds true for all the major digressions within the text is that they all occur, to some extent, to relieve the reader: Leonora's story is told directly after an intense theological discussion; Wilson's tale after a rather long chapter containing "several wonderful adventures"; the conversation between poet and actor after a chapter "containing surprising and bloody adventures", and the final digression, that of... half of the paper... isolated ideas, but ideas that are an integral part of the plot and, as such, they help you better understand the story as a whole. The digression told by the Poet and the Actor, for example, speaks to the nature of plays and poetry and their quality seen in contemporary theaters; this is later developed in the next chapter, where a discussion occurs between Adams and Joseph on the topic of the performing arts. As usual, Fielding sees no reason not to point this connection out to us directly, as he writes at the end of the digression "the next chapter... is a sort of counterpart to this one." This relevance to the book as a whole is common to all the digressions, Leonora's tale exploring loyalty, Wilson's tale exploring personal reform and forgiveness, and Lennard and Paul's tale exploring honesty, all very appropriate themes for the text..