Reaction to Vicar of Wakefield
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Goldsmith’s novel is a child of the Age of Reason. It’s much too heavily weighed to the intellect. It devolved into talking heads. Goldsmith has many useful and provocative insights, in the logical domain which is all-important to him.
The Vicar provides a nice comparison to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (publ. 40-some years later). They share many similar situations, but treated so differently. Jane Austen blends reason and emotion in her scenes. She didn’t fall into the romanticism spiral, as Goldsmith did with the reason spiral.
Librivox
LibriVox has Vicar of Wakefield available as a public domain audiobook.
Goodreads
It does seem that my in-progress notes posted in Goodreads do not show in my review.
