The eighteenth century--"our excellent and indispensable eighteenth century"-is known in the history of English literature particularly for the birth and development of the novel. In this century the novel threw into insignificance all other literary forms and became the dominant form to continue as such for hundreds of years. The pioneers of the novel were Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. The work of this foursome is of monumental significance, particularly because they were not only our first novelists but some of our best. "Joseph Andrews" published in 1742 is Fielding's first novel. It is a classical example of a literary work which started as a parody and ended as an excellent work of art in its own right. The work Fielding intended to parody was Richardson's first novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded which had taken England by storm in the years following 1740 when it was first published. Fielding was aware of giving a new literary form with Joseph Andrews which he called "a comic epic in prose." The present paper will analyze the novel Joseph Andrews in the light of this new genre.