Download or read book Thomas Hardy Reappraised written by Keith Wilson and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2006-12-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a writer who achieved major eminence in both fiction and poetry and whose engagement with these genres encompassed the period of transition from Victorianism to Modernism, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) enjoys a unique position in English Literary History. Michael Millgate, University Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Toronto is widely recognized as the world's foremost Thomas Hardy scholar. His contributions to the study of Hardy over more than three decades include his recently 'revisited' biography, the seven volume edition of Hardy's collected letters, and the influential critical study Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist. In Thomas Hardy Reappraised, editor Keith Wilson pays tribute to Millgate's many contributions to Hardy studies by bringing together new work by fifteen of the world's most eminent Hardy scholars. These essays address questions of biblical and literary allusiveness, cultural, historical, and philosophical context, narrative and poetic theory and practice, as well as Hardy's place in the modern world and his influence on younger writers. Together, the contributors offer one of the most significant reappraisals of Hardy's work to have appeared since Michael Millgate helped to transform Hardy studies. They offer graphic testimony to Hardy's enduring popularity and importance. Contributors: Pamela Dalziel Mary Rimmer Dennis Taylor Barbara Hardy U.C. Knoepflmacher Marjorie Garson Ruth Bernard Yeazell Simon Gatrell J. Hillis Miller George Levine Jeremy V. Steele William W. Morgan Samuel Hynes Norman Page W. J. Keith

Download or read book A Companion to Thomas Hardy written by Keith Wilson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through original essays from a distinguished team of international scholars and Hardy specialists, A Companion to Thomas Hardy provides a unique, one-volume resource, which encompasses all aspects of Hardy's major novels, short stories, and poetry Informed by the latest in scholarly, critical, and theoretical debates from some of the world's leading Hardy scholars Reveals groundbreaking insights through examinations of Hardy’s major novels, short stories, poetry, and drama Explores Hardy's work in the context of the major intellectual and socio-cultural currents of his time and assesses his legacy for subsequent writers

Download or read book The Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Hardy written by Rosemarie Morgan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Hardy, some of the most prominent Hardy specialists working today offer an overview of Hardy scholarship and suggest new directions in Hardy studies. The contributors cover virtually every area relevant to Hardy's fiction and poetry, including philosophy, palaeontology, biography, science, film, popular culture, beliefs, gender, music, masculinity, tragedy, topography, psychology, metaphysics, illustration, bibliographical studies and contemporary response. While several collections have surveyed the Hardy landscape, no previous volume has been composed especially for scholars and advanced graduate students. This companion is specially designed to aid original research on Hardy and serve as the critical basis for Hardy studies in the new millennium. Among the features are a comprehensive bibliography that includes not only works in English but, in acknowledgment of Hardy's explosion in popularity around the world, also works in languages other than English.

Download or read book Thomas Hardy Folklore and Resistance written by Jacqueline Dillion and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-23 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reassesses Hardy’s fiction in the light of his prolonged engagement with the folklore and traditions of rural England. Drawing on wide research, it demonstrates the pivotal role played in the novels by such customs and beliefs as ‘overlooking’, hag-riding, skimmington-riding, sympathetic magic, mumming, bonfire nights, May Day celebrations, Midsummer divination, and the ‘Portland Custom’. This study shows how such traditions were lived out in practice in village life, and how they were represented in written texts – in literature, newspapers, county histories, folklore books, the work of the Folklore Society, archival documents, and letters. It explores tensions between Hardy’s repeated insistence on the authenticity of his accounts and his engagement with contemporary anthropologists and folklorists, and reveals how his efforts to resist their ‘excellently neat’ categories of culture open up wider questions about the nature of belief, progress, and social change.

Download or read book Thomas Hardy written by Ronald D. Morrison and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Hardy enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a novelist before devoting his talents to writing poetry for the remainder of his life. This book focuses on Hardy's remarkable achievements as a novelist. Although Victorian readers considered some of his works controversial, his novels remained highly regarded. His novels still appear in the syllabi of courses in Victorian literature and the British novel, as well as courses in feminist/gender studies, environmental studies, and other topics. For scholars, students, and the general reader, this companion helps to makes Hardy's novels accessible by providing a detailed biography of Hardy, plot summaries of each novel, and analyses of the critical contexts surrounding them. Entries focus on the people, cultural forces, literary forms, and movements that influenced Hardy's novels. The companion also suggests approaches for original interpretations and suggestions for further study.

Download or read book Thomas Hardy The Poems written by Gillian Steinberg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-08-21 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gillian Steinberg offers an approachable introduction to the poems of one of the most prolific and influential English writers, through an examination of wide-ranging selections from his work. Part I of this invaluable study: - Provides clear and stimulating close readings of Thomas Hardy's key poems - Considers major themes in Hardy's poetry, including ghosts, God's role in the world, war, and the painful passage of time - Summarizes the methods of analysis and provides suggestions for further work Part II supplies essential background material, featuring: - An account of Hardy's life and works - Samples of criticism from important Hardy scholars With a helpful Further Reading section, this insightful volume is ideal for anyone who wishes to appreciate and explore Hardy's poetry for themselves.

Download or read book Thomas Hardy written by Tim Armstrong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems Tim Armstrong brings together over 180 poems in the first comprehensively annotated selection of Hardy’s poetry. Unlike most previous selections, this edition preserves the shape of the poet’s career by presenting the poems in the order in which they appeared in the Collected Poems of 1930, rather than re-ordering them thematically. Head notes to each poem give the reader information about its composition, publication, sources and metrical scheme; on-the-page notes list significant variants in Hardy’s manuscripts, point out literary and other allusions, and give explanatory glosses. An appendix contains a selection of relevant passages from Hardy’s notebooks, letters, and autobiography; and a bibliography suggests further reading. Tim Armstrong’s critical Introduction discusses Hardy’s career, his poetics, his use of memory and allusion and examines his position in the context of Victorian debates on aesthetics and belief. The generous selection of poems includes many lesser-known poems as well as those which have received most critical commentary, and the important elegiac sequence ‘Poems of 1912-13’ is included in its entirety.

Download or read book Thomas Hardy and Empire written by Jane L. Bownas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike many of his contemporaries, Thomas Hardy is not generally recognized as an imperial writer, even though he wrote during a period of major expansion of the British Empire and in spite of the many allusions to the Roman Empire and Napoleonic Wars in his writing. Jane L. Bownas examines the context of these references, proposing that Hardy was a writer who not only posed a challenge to the whole of established society, but one whose writings bring into question the very notion of empire. Bownas argues that Hardy takes up ideas of the primitive and civilized that were central to Western thought in the nineteenth century, contesting this opposition and highlighting the effect outsiders have on so-called 'primitive' communities. In her discussion of the oppressions of imperialism, she analyzes the debate surrounding the use of gender as an articulated category, together with race and class, and shows how, in exposing the power structures operating within Britain, Hardy produces a critique of all forms of ideological oppression.

Download or read book Student Companion to Thomas Hardy written by Rosemarie Morgan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-12-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid- late 1800s and early 1900s, Thomas Hardy produced a plethora of eclectic works that were considered too candid and even sacrilegious for their time. Hardy's publishing of fiction, drama, poetry, and the short story ranks him with Shakespeare, one of few other authors in the English language to write major works in more than one literary genre. Growing up, Hardy apprenticed as an architect but soon realized his true calling was writing. He based much of his work on his homeland and local culture in England, creating the fictional county of Wessex, the setting for most of his works. This companion explores the life of Hardy, examining his career and most important works. Ideal for high school and undergraduate students, as well as readers with a general interest in Hardy's life and works, this book takes a close look at Hardy's unconventional works and why he ultimately decided to abandon novel-writing in favor of his first love-poetry.

Download or read book Landscape and Gender in the Novels of Charlotte Bront George Eliot and Thomas Hardy written by Dr Eithne Henson and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining a wide range of representations of physical, metaphorical, and dream landscapes in Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, Eithne Henson explores the way in which gender attitudes are expressed, both in descriptions of landscape as the human body and in ideas of nature. Henson discusses the influence of eighteenth-century aesthetic theory, particularly on Brontë and Eliot, and argues that Ruskinian aesthetics, Darwinism, and other scientific preoccupations of an industrializing economy, changed constructions of landscape in the later nineteenth century. Henson examines the conventions of reading landscape, including the implied expectations of the reader, the question of the gendered narrator, how place defines the kind of action and characters in the novels, the importance of landscape in creating mood, the pastoral as a moral marker for readers, and the influence of changing aesthetic theory on the implied painterly models that the three authors reproduce in their work. She also considers how each writer defines the concept of Englishness against an internal or colonial Other. Alongside these concerns, Henson interrogates the ancient trope that equates woman with nature, and the effect of comparing women to natural objects or offering them as objects of the male gaze, typically to diminish or control them. Informed by close readings, Henson's study offers an original approach to the significances of landscape in the 'realist' nineteenth-century novel.

Download or read book Hardy Deconstructing Hardy written by Nilüfer Özgür and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hardy Deconstructing Hardy aims to add a new dimension of research which has been partly overlooked—a Derridean, Deconstructive reading of Hardy‘s poetry. Analyzing thirty-four popular and less popular poems by Hardy, this volume challenges current references to Derridean Deconstructionism. While Hardy is not conventionally considered a Modernist poet, he shares with Modernists an element that can be referred to as the linguistic crisis by which they try to get over the sense of anxiety against the backdrop of a chaotic world and problematized language. The forerunner of Deconstructionism, Derrida, exposes a long established history of logocentric thinking, which has continually been moving between binary oppositions and Platonic dualities. Derrida simply puts forward the idea that there is no logos, no origin, and no centre of truth. The centre is always somewhere else; he identifies this as a ―free play of signifiers.‖ Consequently, the anxiety of the poet with modern sensibility to find a point of reference inevitably results in a ―crisis of representation,‖ or, in a problematic relation between language and truth, the signifier and the signified. This crisis can be observed in Hardy‘s poetry, too. For this purpose, this research focuses on four key concepts in Hardy‘s poetry that expose this problematic relationship between language and truth: his agnosticism, his concept of the self, his language and concept of structure, and his concept of time and temporality. These aspects are explored in the light of Derrida‘s Deconstructionism with reference to poems by Hardy which heralded the Modernist crisis of representation. This text will fulfill the function of reconciling theory with practice and become the manifestation of the importance of Poststructuralist criticism.

Download or read book Thomas Hardy Poet written by Adrian Grafe and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-09-18 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poems of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) are key to understanding 19th, 20th and even 21st century poetry. This collection of fresh essays sheds new light on Hardy's poems--some of which have received little critical attention--from a variety of thematic and analytical approaches, offering a detailed picture of how his works are currently being read. The contributors discuss why Hardy's poetic genius is less and less overshadowed by his career as a novelist and highlight his passionate attention to small details, his delight in "noticing things" and his "eye for...mysteries."

Download or read book Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Question of Tragedy in the Novels of Thomas Hardy written by Kevin Taylor and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What role do novels, drama, and tragedy play within Christian thought and living? The twentieth century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar addressed these questions using tragic drama. For him, Christ was the true tragic hero of the world who exceeded all tragic literature and experience. Balthasar demonstrated how ancient, pre-Christian tragedy and Renaissance works contained important Christian concepts, but he critiqued modern novels as failing to be either truly tragic or Christian. By examining the tragic novels of Thomas Hardy on their own terms, we have an important counterpoint to Balthasar's argument that the novel is too prosaic for theological reflection. Hardy's novels are an apt pairing for examination and critique, as they are both classically and biblically influenced, as well as contemporary.The larger implication for Balthasar's theology is that his innovations in theological aesthetics and tragedy must be expanded in the light of modernity and the tragic novel.

Download or read book Wordsworth and Evolution in Victorian Literature written by Trenton B. Olsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The influences of William Wordsworth’s writing and evolutionary theory—the nineteenth century’s two defining visions of nature—conflicted in the Victorian period. For Victorians, Wordsworthian nature was a caring source of inspiration and moral guidance, signaling humanity's divine origins and potential. Darwin’s nature, by contrast, appeared as an indifferent and amoral reminder of an evolutionary past that demanded participation in a brutal struggle for existence. Victorian authors like Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy grappled with these competing representations in their work. They turned to Wordsworth as an alternative or antidote to evolution, criticized and altered his poetry in response to Darwinism, and synthesized elements of each to propose their own modified theories. Darwin’s account of a material, evolutionary nature both threatened the Wordsworthian belief in nature’s transcendent value and made spiritual elevation seem more urgently necessary. Victorian authors used Wordsworth and Darwin to explore what form of transcendence, if any, could survive an evolutionary age, and reevaluated the purpose of literature in the process.

Download or read book Thomas Hardy written by Timothy Hands and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1995-10-11 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Hardy made a reputation in more than one genre and in more than one period, and he has constantly given rise to widely differing critical responses. This study ranges in time from Hardy's response to Romanticism through to an examination of his diverse fortunes at the hands of critics from Hardy's own time to the present day. His achievement is examined through his various forms - his letters, autobiography, novels, poems and personal writings - and set in the context of the work of those whom he knew or admired. Timothy Hands surveys Hardy's ideas, his views on society and his remarkable knowledge of the contemporary arts. The book offers to specialist, student and general reader alike an authoritative yet readable guide through the biographical, literary and critical mazes surrounding Hardy's life and work.

Download or read book Spirits of Community written by K. D. M. Snell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concern about the 'decline of community', and the theme of 'community spirit', are internationally widespread in the modern world. The English past has featured many representations of declining community, expressed by those who lamented its loss in quite different periods and in diverse genres. This book analyses how community spirit and the passing of community have been described in the past – whether for good or ill – with an eye to modern issues, such as the so-called 'loneliness epidemic' or the social consequences of alternative structures of community. It does this through examination of authors such as Thomas Hardy, James Wentworth Day, Adrian Bell and H.E. Bates, by appraising detective fiction writers, analysing parish magazines, considering the letter writing of the parish poor in the 18th and 19th centuries, and through the depictions of realist landscape painters such as George Morland. K. D. M. Snell addresses modern social concerns, showing how many current preoccupations had earlier precedents. In presenting past representations of declining communities, and the way these affected individuals of very different political persuasions, the book draws out lessons and examples from the past about what community has meant hitherto, setting into context modern predicaments and judgements about 'spirits of community' today.

Download or read book Reading Thomas Hardy written by George Levine and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major new reading of the novels of Thomas Hardy, by leading critic George Levine, disentangles the author's often elaborately distanced prose from his beautiful poetic and precise renderings of the natural world. Clear, direct and minimally academic in his own writing, Levine provides an overview of Hardy's entire fictional canon, with extensive discussions of his early and late novels including his last, The Well-Beloved. Levine draws new attention to the way Hardy absorbed both the ideas and the writing strategies of Charles Darwin, and develops new perspectives first articulated in the criticism of great novelists - in particular Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. Levine departs from the critical norm by reading Hardy in the context of his deep feeling for the natural world and all living things, and the implicit affirmation of life that sometimes drives his bleakest narratives.