Michael Millgate
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183662
- eISBN:
- 9780191674099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183662.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter focuses on Florence Hardy, Thomas Hardy's second wife, and the role she played in Hardy' s controversial funeral. Her role as one of Hardy's literary-executor is discussed. Along with ...
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This chapter focuses on Florence Hardy, Thomas Hardy's second wife, and the role she played in Hardy' s controversial funeral. Her role as one of Hardy's literary-executor is discussed. Along with Cockerell, she directed the preservation and destruction of the literary works of Thomas Hardy. As a literary-executor, she managed the publication of Hardy's books, carried out revisions, included insertions of information relevant to his books, reduced social chronicling and hostility towards critics, and cut out a number of references to her predecessors. The flaws and the constraints within Florence's and Cockerell's relationship as Hardy's literary-executors is also discussed wherein they severely differed on their ideas on how to handle Hardy memorial. Discussion of her last years and her assigning of Cooper Willis as the sole literary-executor of the remaining manuscripts and unpublished works of Hardy are also included in this chapter.Less
This chapter focuses on Florence Hardy, Thomas Hardy's second wife, and the role she played in Hardy' s controversial funeral. Her role as one of Hardy's literary-executor is discussed. Along with Cockerell, she directed the preservation and destruction of the literary works of Thomas Hardy. As a literary-executor, she managed the publication of Hardy's books, carried out revisions, included insertions of information relevant to his books, reduced social chronicling and hostility towards critics, and cut out a number of references to her predecessors. The flaws and the constraints within Florence's and Cockerell's relationship as Hardy's literary-executors is also discussed wherein they severely differed on their ideas on how to handle Hardy memorial. Discussion of her last years and her assigning of Cooper Willis as the sole literary-executor of the remaining manuscripts and unpublished works of Hardy are also included in this chapter.
Kenneth Millard
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122258
- eISBN:
- 9780191671395
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122258.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The poets writing in the first years of the 20th century have commonly been discussed in isolation. This book considers together seven poets — Henry Newbolt, John Masefield, Thomas Hardy, Edward ...
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The poets writing in the first years of the 20th century have commonly been discussed in isolation. This book considers together seven poets — Henry Newbolt, John Masefield, Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, A. E. Housman, John Davidson, and Rupert Brooke — and argues that their work is worthy of more serious critical attention than it has previously received. Through an analysis of numerous individual poems, the chapter isolates certain common concerns: the changing and perhaps fading value of England; a distrust of the medium of language itself; a distrust also of the creative imagination. In its reassessment of these poets, the book provides a literary context for their work, finding in it a kind of pre-War modern British poetry distinct from the Modernism of subsequent decades. In establishing a literary context for the poetry of this century's first decade the book offers a revision of modern literary history and points towards an alternative line in 20th-century British poetry that culminates in the work of Philip Larkin.Less
The poets writing in the first years of the 20th century have commonly been discussed in isolation. This book considers together seven poets — Henry Newbolt, John Masefield, Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, A. E. Housman, John Davidson, and Rupert Brooke — and argues that their work is worthy of more serious critical attention than it has previously received. Through an analysis of numerous individual poems, the chapter isolates certain common concerns: the changing and perhaps fading value of England; a distrust of the medium of language itself; a distrust also of the creative imagination. In its reassessment of these poets, the book provides a literary context for their work, finding in it a kind of pre-War modern British poetry distinct from the Modernism of subsequent decades. In establishing a literary context for the poetry of this century's first decade the book offers a revision of modern literary history and points towards an alternative line in 20th-century British poetry that culminates in the work of Philip Larkin.
Michael Millgate
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183662
- eISBN:
- 9780191674099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183662.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter focuses on Thomas Hardy, an architect, a novelist, and a poet who assumed the mantle of old age with such longevity wherein he spent his entire life preparing for that time of his life. ...
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This chapter focuses on Thomas Hardy, an architect, a novelist, and a poet who assumed the mantle of old age with such longevity wherein he spent his entire life preparing for that time of his life. Faced by hostile criticisms of his last two controversial novels — Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy shifted from being a novelist to a poet wherein he established himself. A self-critic, Hardy re-read and revisited his books and works, altering what he felt had to be revised and preserved, what he deemed as ‘artistic errors’. He edited typographical errors, stylistic infelicities, incidence of dialect forms of speech in his characters, and the topography of his settings. He also edited his controversial novels, providing them with long and critical prefaces that described his methods and defended his literary ambitions. While he staunchly guarded the literary and economic importance of his novels and stories, he achieved directness of expression, privacy, and exemption from controversy in his poems, aspects of his art which eluded him during his final years as a novelist. For Hardy, the latter years of his life did not impede him from remaining creative and shaping his career and his reputation. Realizing his creative genius, he modelled his life to the limits of its creativity, leaving no substantial literary tasks undone.Less
This chapter focuses on Thomas Hardy, an architect, a novelist, and a poet who assumed the mantle of old age with such longevity wherein he spent his entire life preparing for that time of his life. Faced by hostile criticisms of his last two controversial novels — Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy shifted from being a novelist to a poet wherein he established himself. A self-critic, Hardy re-read and revisited his books and works, altering what he felt had to be revised and preserved, what he deemed as ‘artistic errors’. He edited typographical errors, stylistic infelicities, incidence of dialect forms of speech in his characters, and the topography of his settings. He also edited his controversial novels, providing them with long and critical prefaces that described his methods and defended his literary ambitions. While he staunchly guarded the literary and economic importance of his novels and stories, he achieved directness of expression, privacy, and exemption from controversy in his poems, aspects of his art which eluded him during his final years as a novelist. For Hardy, the latter years of his life did not impede him from remaining creative and shaping his career and his reputation. Realizing his creative genius, he modelled his life to the limits of its creativity, leaving no substantial literary tasks undone.
Jane Wood
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187608
- eISBN:
- 9780191674723
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187608.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
In what was once described as ‘the century of nerves’, a fascination with the mysterious processes governing physical and psychological states was shared by medical and fiction writers alike. This ...
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In what was once described as ‘the century of nerves’, a fascination with the mysterious processes governing physical and psychological states was shared by medical and fiction writers alike. This elegant study offers an integrated analysis of how medicine and literature figured the connection between the body and the mind. The book looks at some of the century's most influential neurological and physiological theories, and gives readings of both major and relatively neglected fictions — a range which includes work by Charlotte Brontë and George MacDonald, George Eliot and Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy and George Gissing. Stepping into an already lively area of interdisciplinary debate, this book is distinguished by its recognition of the intellectual and imaginative force of both discourses: it extends our understanding of the interaction between science and literature in the wider culture of the period.Less
In what was once described as ‘the century of nerves’, a fascination with the mysterious processes governing physical and psychological states was shared by medical and fiction writers alike. This elegant study offers an integrated analysis of how medicine and literature figured the connection between the body and the mind. The book looks at some of the century's most influential neurological and physiological theories, and gives readings of both major and relatively neglected fictions — a range which includes work by Charlotte Brontë and George MacDonald, George Eliot and Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy and George Gissing. Stepping into an already lively area of interdisciplinary debate, this book is distinguished by its recognition of the intellectual and imaginative force of both discourses: it extends our understanding of the interaction between science and literature in the wider culture of the period.
Sophie Gilmartin and Rod Mengham
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748632657
- eISBN:
- 9780748651641
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748632657.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines the stories in Thomas Hardy's Wessex Tales. It notes that most of the stories are set at least thirty-five years before their telling in the volume, and that ‘Wessex’ is ...
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This chapter examines the stories in Thomas Hardy's Wessex Tales. It notes that most of the stories are set at least thirty-five years before their telling in the volume, and that ‘Wessex’ is described as an environment where uncluttered spaces provided freedom of movement. The chapter first discusses Hardy's verbal descriptions, which were influenced by his experiences with viewing the landscape through big brass telescopes. It reveals that Hardy's experience at Rushy-Pond – along with his telescope – was part of his inspiration for his stories in Wessex Tales. The chapter then shows how the telescope serves to figuratively and practically emphasise Hardy's focus on his object, which leaves everything else temporarily invisible. The rest of the chapter examines certain aspects of the stories in Wessex Tales, including the importance of the human figure, the role of the executioner, the allusions to galvanism and photography, and rivalry between women.Less
This chapter examines the stories in Thomas Hardy's Wessex Tales. It notes that most of the stories are set at least thirty-five years before their telling in the volume, and that ‘Wessex’ is described as an environment where uncluttered spaces provided freedom of movement. The chapter first discusses Hardy's verbal descriptions, which were influenced by his experiences with viewing the landscape through big brass telescopes. It reveals that Hardy's experience at Rushy-Pond – along with his telescope – was part of his inspiration for his stories in Wessex Tales. The chapter then shows how the telescope serves to figuratively and practically emphasise Hardy's focus on his object, which leaves everything else temporarily invisible. The rest of the chapter examines certain aspects of the stories in Wessex Tales, including the importance of the human figure, the role of the executioner, the allusions to galvanism and photography, and rivalry between women.
Bryan Magee
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198237228
- eISBN:
- 9780191706233
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198237227.003.0019
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Dylan Thomas made his name with one particular poem, ‘The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’, which he wrote and published in his teens. Not only the theme but also the imagery in ...
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Dylan Thomas made his name with one particular poem, ‘The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’, which he wrote and published in his teens. Not only the theme but also the imagery in detail is too close to certain passages in Schopenhauer for a coincidence to be likely. It is more probable that there was some influence. This is made more likely by the fact that there are good reasons to believe that the young Thomas had read a book called Thomas Hardy's Universe, by Ernest Brennecke, which contains many quotations from Schopenhauer, including, in its first chapter, the one closest to Thomas's poem.Less
Dylan Thomas made his name with one particular poem, ‘The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’, which he wrote and published in his teens. Not only the theme but also the imagery in detail is too close to certain passages in Schopenhauer for a coincidence to be likely. It is more probable that there was some influence. This is made more likely by the fact that there are good reasons to believe that the young Thomas had read a book called Thomas Hardy's Universe, by Ernest Brennecke, which contains many quotations from Schopenhauer, including, in its first chapter, the one closest to Thomas's poem.
Dennis Taylor
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122616
- eISBN:
- 9780191671494
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122616.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This is a detailed exploration of Thomas Hardy's linguistic ‘awkwardness’, a subject that has long puzzled critics. It shows that Hardy's language must be understood as a distinctive response to the ...
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This is a detailed exploration of Thomas Hardy's linguistic ‘awkwardness’, a subject that has long puzzled critics. It shows that Hardy's language must be understood as a distinctive response to the philological and literary issues of his time. Deeply influenced by the Victorian historical study of language, Hardy deliberately incorporated into his own writing a sense of language's recent and hidden history, its multiple stages and classes, and its arbitrary motivations. Indeed, the book argues, Hardy provides an example of how a writer ‘purifies the dialect of the tribe’ by inclusiveness, by heterogeniety, and by a sense of history which distinguishes Hardy from a more ahistorical, synchronic modernist aesthetic and which constitutes an ongoing challenge to literary language. In this treatment of a writer's relation to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the book also examines the influence on Hardy's language of the founding and development, in this period, of the OED.Less
This is a detailed exploration of Thomas Hardy's linguistic ‘awkwardness’, a subject that has long puzzled critics. It shows that Hardy's language must be understood as a distinctive response to the philological and literary issues of his time. Deeply influenced by the Victorian historical study of language, Hardy deliberately incorporated into his own writing a sense of language's recent and hidden history, its multiple stages and classes, and its arbitrary motivations. Indeed, the book argues, Hardy provides an example of how a writer ‘purifies the dialect of the tribe’ by inclusiveness, by heterogeniety, and by a sense of history which distinguishes Hardy from a more ahistorical, synchronic modernist aesthetic and which constitutes an ongoing challenge to literary language. In this treatment of a writer's relation to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the book also examines the influence on Hardy's language of the founding and development, in this period, of the OED.
Jane Wood
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187608
- eISBN:
- 9780191674723
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187608.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter discusses nervous degeneration and its literary representation in the 1890s. Much of the fiction of the 1890s self-consciously engages with the physical and medical sciences to configure ...
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This chapter discusses nervous degeneration and its literary representation in the 1890s. Much of the fiction of the 1890s self-consciously engages with the physical and medical sciences to configure the new disease of ‘neurasthenia’, a nervous malady which came to be both casually and symbolically linked to the period. George Gissing's The Whirlpool and Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure are novels which situate narratives of nervous breakdown at the problematic intersection of biological theories of determinism and cultural anxieties about the alleged deleterious effects of modern life. The aim of this chapter is to look beyond the particulars of plot and personality which link these books thematically to New Woman fiction in order to reveal the extent of the influence of the biological and physical sciences in creating a culture of unease around the issue of sexual equality.Less
This chapter discusses nervous degeneration and its literary representation in the 1890s. Much of the fiction of the 1890s self-consciously engages with the physical and medical sciences to configure the new disease of ‘neurasthenia’, a nervous malady which came to be both casually and symbolically linked to the period. George Gissing's The Whirlpool and Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure are novels which situate narratives of nervous breakdown at the problematic intersection of biological theories of determinism and cultural anxieties about the alleged deleterious effects of modern life. The aim of this chapter is to look beyond the particulars of plot and personality which link these books thematically to New Woman fiction in order to reveal the extent of the influence of the biological and physical sciences in creating a culture of unease around the issue of sexual equality.
Clare Pettitt
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199253203
- eISBN:
- 9780191719172
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253203.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
In her 1878 dystopic essay ‘Shadows of the Coming Race’, George Eliot went so far as to imagine the disappearance, not only of intellectual property, but of its necessary corollary — the individual ...
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In her 1878 dystopic essay ‘Shadows of the Coming Race’, George Eliot went so far as to imagine the disappearance, not only of intellectual property, but of its necessary corollary — the individual consciousness. Just as improved printing technologies had affected the debate on intellectual property in England in the 1830s, so new electrical applications posed a renewed threat to the notion of the single author in the last decades of the century. Fears about the transmission of information across vast distances, untethered from origins, and no longer ‘belonging’ to individuals or places, caused Thomas Hardy to reflect upon the dangers of new technologies and media. The growth of the electricity industry and the explosion of the publishing market are not such separable phenomena as they first seem. This chapter also looks at Hardy's views on issues related to both domestic and international copyright.Less
In her 1878 dystopic essay ‘Shadows of the Coming Race’, George Eliot went so far as to imagine the disappearance, not only of intellectual property, but of its necessary corollary — the individual consciousness. Just as improved printing technologies had affected the debate on intellectual property in England in the 1830s, so new electrical applications posed a renewed threat to the notion of the single author in the last decades of the century. Fears about the transmission of information across vast distances, untethered from origins, and no longer ‘belonging’ to individuals or places, caused Thomas Hardy to reflect upon the dangers of new technologies and media. The growth of the electricity industry and the explosion of the publishing market are not such separable phenomena as they first seem. This chapter also looks at Hardy's views on issues related to both domestic and international copyright.
Trish Ferguson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748673247
- eISBN:
- 9780748695256
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748673247.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book is about Thomas Hardy, an English novelist and poet whose legal career began in 1894 when he was appointed county magistrate, and his fiction in relation to legislative and literary ...
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This book is about Thomas Hardy, an English novelist and poet whose legal career began in 1894 when he was appointed county magistrate, and his fiction in relation to legislative and literary history. It situates Hardy’s legal fiction within the legal consciousness of the late nineteenth century and its pervasive preoccupation with the law. It argues that Hardy’s work was shaped both by his awareness of individual cases and acrimonious debates over legal reforms, that he was influenced by sensation fiction and its legal plot lines, and that his open-ended narratives provoke his readers to examine legal issues which he leaves unanswered in a modernist form of training in judicial reasoning. These issues range from the limits of counsel to the definition of legal insanity, legal protection of women from abusive relationships and fundamental social inequalities exacerbated by the reform of land law. Finally, the book considers how Hardy’s fiction offers pseudo-legal representation in narratives that mirror the dialogic form of trial procedure.Less
This book is about Thomas Hardy, an English novelist and poet whose legal career began in 1894 when he was appointed county magistrate, and his fiction in relation to legislative and literary history. It situates Hardy’s legal fiction within the legal consciousness of the late nineteenth century and its pervasive preoccupation with the law. It argues that Hardy’s work was shaped both by his awareness of individual cases and acrimonious debates over legal reforms, that he was influenced by sensation fiction and its legal plot lines, and that his open-ended narratives provoke his readers to examine legal issues which he leaves unanswered in a modernist form of training in judicial reasoning. These issues range from the limits of counsel to the definition of legal insanity, legal protection of women from abusive relationships and fundamental social inequalities exacerbated by the reform of land law. Finally, the book considers how Hardy’s fiction offers pseudo-legal representation in narratives that mirror the dialogic form of trial procedure.
Tim Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199562022
- eISBN:
- 9780191707636
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199562022.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter explores the war poetry of Thomas Hardy. His credentials as witness were important to Hardy and that war poems were, emphatically, eyewitness accounts, claiming an authority denied to ...
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This chapter explores the war poetry of Thomas Hardy. His credentials as witness were important to Hardy and that war poems were, emphatically, eyewitness accounts, claiming an authority denied to absentees. The witness does more than merely see: he testifies to the truth of contentious and possibly even criminal events. This emphasis on experience over hearsay and propaganda is affirmed many times by war poets throughout the following century.Less
This chapter explores the war poetry of Thomas Hardy. His credentials as witness were important to Hardy and that war poems were, emphatically, eyewitness accounts, claiming an authority denied to absentees. The witness does more than merely see: he testifies to the truth of contentious and possibly even criminal events. This emphasis on experience over hearsay and propaganda is affirmed many times by war poets throughout the following century.
Ralph Pite
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199588541
- eISBN:
- 9780191741845
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588541.003.0017
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
In October 1870, Rome and Latium were annexed by the kingdom of Italy and in July 1871 Rome was made capital. In the years that followed the city was radically transformed. This process exacerbated ...
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In October 1870, Rome and Latium were annexed by the kingdom of Italy and in July 1871 Rome was made capital. In the years that followed the city was radically transformed. This process exacerbated conflicts between visitors and inhabitants over who could claim to be Rome's true heirs — a conflict that Risorgimento nationalism had generated since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Qualms about the new Rome and the relations to the past it permitted or blocked can be found in much writing of the late nineteenth century. Unexpectedly, perhaps, given his reputation as a regionalist, they are explored with particular intelligence by Thomas Hardy, in writing that followed his single journey to Rome in 1887. Particularly in his sequence, ‘Poems of Pilgrimage’, published in Poems of the Past and the Present (1902), Hardy reflected on how far the Romantic inheritance might still be found, overlaying the classical scene.Less
In October 1870, Rome and Latium were annexed by the kingdom of Italy and in July 1871 Rome was made capital. In the years that followed the city was radically transformed. This process exacerbated conflicts between visitors and inhabitants over who could claim to be Rome's true heirs — a conflict that Risorgimento nationalism had generated since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Qualms about the new Rome and the relations to the past it permitted or blocked can be found in much writing of the late nineteenth century. Unexpectedly, perhaps, given his reputation as a regionalist, they are explored with particular intelligence by Thomas Hardy, in writing that followed his single journey to Rome in 1887. Particularly in his sequence, ‘Poems of Pilgrimage’, published in Poems of the Past and the Present (1902), Hardy reflected on how far the Romantic inheritance might still be found, overlaying the classical scene.
Shuttleworth Sally
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199582563
- eISBN:
- 9780191702327
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582563.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines the portrayal of unnatural childhood in Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure. The novel was influenced by the over-pressure debates of the 1880s and associated concerns with ...
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This chapter examines the portrayal of unnatural childhood in Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure. The novel was influenced by the over-pressure debates of the 1880s and associated concerns with child suicide, but placed them in a new light. This chapter describes a scene from this novel where the narrator superimposed on the childhood sorrow of the character of Jude an adult's pessimistic vision of a Darwinian struggle for existence which overturns the comforting religious order of natural theology.Less
This chapter examines the portrayal of unnatural childhood in Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure. The novel was influenced by the over-pressure debates of the 1880s and associated concerns with child suicide, but placed them in a new light. This chapter describes a scene from this novel where the narrator superimposed on the childhood sorrow of the character of Jude an adult's pessimistic vision of a Darwinian struggle for existence which overturns the comforting religious order of natural theology.
Peter Mcdonald
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199661190
- eISBN:
- 9780191749049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199661190.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
This chapter gives a critical understanding of rhyme as a difficult aspect of stylistic criticism, looking at the complex relationship with literary history. The chapter then considers Elizabeth ...
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This chapter gives a critical understanding of rhyme as a difficult aspect of stylistic criticism, looking at the complex relationship with literary history. The chapter then considers Elizabeth Barrett Barrett in the 1840s and later, and the problems posed for (and by) her in rhyme; Barrett's debts to, and departures from, Byron and Wordsworth in rhyme; Barrett's ode ‘sounds’ and Wordsworth's ode ‘On the Power of Sound’; and Barrett's multiple refigurings of Wordsworth's ‘Intimations’ ode. The chapter then considers A. C. Swinburne and the ‘submission’ to rhyme; Swinburne and Keats, with a close reading of ‘Before Parting’; Swinburne's ‘By the North Sea’; and debts to Keats's and Wordsworth's rhymes. The chapter next considers rhyme's diminishing returns for Swinburne's verse; Swinburne and Keats in Thomas Hardy's ‘The Darkling Thrush’; Hardy, rhyme, and meaning, with a close reading of his ‘The Voice’ in relation to Swinburne's ‘At Parting’; and Hardy's rhymes and their debt to Keats's Nightingale Ode in a close reading of ‘The Shadow on the Stone’. Finally it describes Hardy and connections between dream, rhyme, and reality.Less
This chapter gives a critical understanding of rhyme as a difficult aspect of stylistic criticism, looking at the complex relationship with literary history. The chapter then considers Elizabeth Barrett Barrett in the 1840s and later, and the problems posed for (and by) her in rhyme; Barrett's debts to, and departures from, Byron and Wordsworth in rhyme; Barrett's ode ‘sounds’ and Wordsworth's ode ‘On the Power of Sound’; and Barrett's multiple refigurings of Wordsworth's ‘Intimations’ ode. The chapter then considers A. C. Swinburne and the ‘submission’ to rhyme; Swinburne and Keats, with a close reading of ‘Before Parting’; Swinburne's ‘By the North Sea’; and debts to Keats's and Wordsworth's rhymes. The chapter next considers rhyme's diminishing returns for Swinburne's verse; Swinburne and Keats in Thomas Hardy's ‘The Darkling Thrush’; Hardy, rhyme, and meaning, with a close reading of his ‘The Voice’ in relation to Swinburne's ‘At Parting’; and Hardy's rhymes and their debt to Keats's Nightingale Ode in a close reading of ‘The Shadow on the Stone’. Finally it describes Hardy and connections between dream, rhyme, and reality.
Trish Ferguson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748673247
- eISBN:
- 9780748695256
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748673247.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines Thomas Hardy’s legal fiction in relation to gender inequality and the double standard underpinning the law. It considers the legal disabilities experienced by women in their ...
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This chapter examines Thomas Hardy’s legal fiction in relation to gender inequality and the double standard underpinning the law. It considers the legal disabilities experienced by women in their relationships with men, as well as women’s legal non-existence under coverture. It shows how the Matrimonial Causes Act further exacerbated women’s marital woes by granting divorce to men on the grounds of adultery but requiring female plaintiffs to prove that their husbands' adultery was compounded by additional aggravation such as bigamy or incest. The chapter looks at the limited legal redress offered by the Matrimonial Causes Acts of 1857 and 1878 in the context of fin de siècle feminism and how Hardy’s novels exposed the economic and social factors operating on women, and hence sustaining abusive marriages. The emphasis is on how Hardy’s fiction addresses the uncertain definition of marital cruelty.Less
This chapter examines Thomas Hardy’s legal fiction in relation to gender inequality and the double standard underpinning the law. It considers the legal disabilities experienced by women in their relationships with men, as well as women’s legal non-existence under coverture. It shows how the Matrimonial Causes Act further exacerbated women’s marital woes by granting divorce to men on the grounds of adultery but requiring female plaintiffs to prove that their husbands' adultery was compounded by additional aggravation such as bigamy or incest. The chapter looks at the limited legal redress offered by the Matrimonial Causes Acts of 1857 and 1878 in the context of fin de siècle feminism and how Hardy’s novels exposed the economic and social factors operating on women, and hence sustaining abusive marriages. The emphasis is on how Hardy’s fiction addresses the uncertain definition of marital cruelty.
Ivan Kreilkamp
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226576237
- eISBN:
- 9780226576404
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226576404.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
With Thomas Hardy, this book comes to the first canonical British novelist to take an active interest animal-welfare and anti-cruelty politics—which had moved from the margins to closer to the ...
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With Thomas Hardy, this book comes to the first canonical British novelist to take an active interest animal-welfare and anti-cruelty politics—which had moved from the margins to closer to the mainstream in the decades since the 1824 founding of the SPCA (later the RSPCA). This chapter considers Hardy’s representation of animal life and animality both as important in its own right, and as deeply intertwined with his depiction of human life. It does so through a consideration of various Hardy texts and aspects of his biography, but especially through a reading of what is defined as the “pastoral plot” of Far From the Madding Crowd. This novel teaches its readers to “pity the sheep” and to push beyond an exclusively human-centered perspective. To pity the sheep is to “follow after” and live with the animal, to be willing to risk symbolic infection from proximity to the non-human. Hardy’s shepherd Gabriel Oak represents a new kind of protagonist for the Victorian novel, one who achieves his status not by asserting but by giving up the privilege of casting out the animal from the space of the human and the home.Less
With Thomas Hardy, this book comes to the first canonical British novelist to take an active interest animal-welfare and anti-cruelty politics—which had moved from the margins to closer to the mainstream in the decades since the 1824 founding of the SPCA (later the RSPCA). This chapter considers Hardy’s representation of animal life and animality both as important in its own right, and as deeply intertwined with his depiction of human life. It does so through a consideration of various Hardy texts and aspects of his biography, but especially through a reading of what is defined as the “pastoral plot” of Far From the Madding Crowd. This novel teaches its readers to “pity the sheep” and to push beyond an exclusively human-centered perspective. To pity the sheep is to “follow after” and live with the animal, to be willing to risk symbolic infection from proximity to the non-human. Hardy’s shepherd Gabriel Oak represents a new kind of protagonist for the Victorian novel, one who achieves his status not by asserting but by giving up the privilege of casting out the animal from the space of the human and the home.
Trish Ferguson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748673247
- eISBN:
- 9780748695256
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748673247.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines Thomas Hardy’s legal fiction in the context of debates surrounding the changing definition of legal insanity during the nineteenth century. Focusing on the McNaughten Rules and ...
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This chapter examines Thomas Hardy’s legal fiction in the context of debates surrounding the changing definition of legal insanity during the nineteenth century. Focusing on the McNaughten Rules and its insistence that insanity must be understood in terms of cognitive impairment, the chapter argues that Hardy’s fiction raises hypothetical cases that reveal the lack of certainty around insanity cases, particularly in cases of provocation. It also discusses the influence of sensation fiction, which also explored the issues of legal insanity and criminal responsibility through a limited narrative perspective, on Hardy’s fiction as well as his use of third-person narrative to defend his characters mirroring the role of defence counsel. It contends that the use of a limited third-person narrative demonstrates the legal complexity of establishing mens rea as well as the difficulty of the relationship between intention and action.Less
This chapter examines Thomas Hardy’s legal fiction in the context of debates surrounding the changing definition of legal insanity during the nineteenth century. Focusing on the McNaughten Rules and its insistence that insanity must be understood in terms of cognitive impairment, the chapter argues that Hardy’s fiction raises hypothetical cases that reveal the lack of certainty around insanity cases, particularly in cases of provocation. It also discusses the influence of sensation fiction, which also explored the issues of legal insanity and criminal responsibility through a limited narrative perspective, on Hardy’s fiction as well as his use of third-person narrative to defend his characters mirroring the role of defence counsel. It contends that the use of a limited third-person narrative demonstrates the legal complexity of establishing mens rea as well as the difficulty of the relationship between intention and action.
J. Hillis Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263103
- eISBN:
- 9780823266579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263103.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The Return of the Native shows that Hardy personifies nature and sees people as expressions of that personification. At the same time he characteristically gives some verbal clue that this ...
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The Return of the Native shows that Hardy personifies nature and sees people as expressions of that personification. At the same time he characteristically gives some verbal clue that this spiritualization of nature as the embodiment of some spooky “It” is no more than the reification of a figure of speech, the age-old error of taking a figure of speech literally. The comings and goings of the characters who rise up from the heath in The Return of the Native dramatize the heath’s “tragical possibilities.” The chief characters do not share the immemorial community assumptions of the farmers, turf-cutters, and farmwives who populate the heath. The main characters are all in one way or another detached from the heath community. The maps Hardy made and the photographs that illustrated The Return of the Native in the early collected editions of Hardy’s writings make the novel a multimedia work.Less
The Return of the Native shows that Hardy personifies nature and sees people as expressions of that personification. At the same time he characteristically gives some verbal clue that this spiritualization of nature as the embodiment of some spooky “It” is no more than the reification of a figure of speech, the age-old error of taking a figure of speech literally. The comings and goings of the characters who rise up from the heath in The Return of the Native dramatize the heath’s “tragical possibilities.” The chief characters do not share the immemorial community assumptions of the farmers, turf-cutters, and farmwives who populate the heath. The main characters are all in one way or another detached from the heath community. The maps Hardy made and the photographs that illustrated The Return of the Native in the early collected editions of Hardy’s writings make the novel a multimedia work.
Catherine Maxwell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719071447
- eISBN:
- 9781781701096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719071447.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This book focuses on a range of authors from the late Victorian period, some canonical, some non-canonical, whose works, in addition to poetry, encompass a variety of literary forms such as the ...
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This book focuses on a range of authors from the late Victorian period, some canonical, some non-canonical, whose works, in addition to poetry, encompass a variety of literary forms such as the essay, the short story and the novel. The sublime is now treated as only one among a number of forms of imaginative vision used by chosen writers, all of whom are deeply indebted to Romantic influences. The analysis of the following writers – Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Theodore Watts-Dunton and Thomas Hardy – centres on the iconic aesthetic image of the human face and form mediated through shadows, spirits, ghosts, corpses, body substitutes, paintings, sculptures or sculptural fragments, and finds certain repeated motifs, such as the non-finito, the Michelangelesque incomplete or unfinished body, the suggestive fragment and the allied, widely used figure of synecdoche, the part for the whole, which so often acts as stimulus for the visionary imagination. These repeated images or patterns of images illuminate each author's creativity, aesthetic practice and understanding of the imagination. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This book focuses on a range of authors from the late Victorian period, some canonical, some non-canonical, whose works, in addition to poetry, encompass a variety of literary forms such as the essay, the short story and the novel. The sublime is now treated as only one among a number of forms of imaginative vision used by chosen writers, all of whom are deeply indebted to Romantic influences. The analysis of the following writers – Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Theodore Watts-Dunton and Thomas Hardy – centres on the iconic aesthetic image of the human face and form mediated through shadows, spirits, ghosts, corpses, body substitutes, paintings, sculptures or sculptural fragments, and finds certain repeated motifs, such as the non-finito, the Michelangelesque incomplete or unfinished body, the suggestive fragment and the allied, widely used figure of synecdoche, the part for the whole, which so often acts as stimulus for the visionary imagination. These repeated images or patterns of images illuminate each author's creativity, aesthetic practice and understanding of the imagination. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Trish Ferguson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748673247
- eISBN:
- 9780748695256
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748673247.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines the limits of the reasonable man standard in terms of gender bias by focusing on Thomas Hardy’s narratives in the context of two divorce cases: Norton v. Melbourne (1836) and ...
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This chapter examines the limits of the reasonable man standard in terms of gender bias by focusing on Thomas Hardy’s narratives in the context of two divorce cases: Norton v. Melbourne (1836) and Crawford v. Crawford and Dilke (1886). It considers the Norton case as an illustration of women’s legal marginalisation, both in terms of their treatment within marriage and within the courtroom. It explains how Hardy exposes the patriarchal basis of legal judgment in the courtroom via the Norton case and how his legal fiction offers pseudo-legal representation in narratives that reflect the dialogic form of trial procedure.Less
This chapter examines the limits of the reasonable man standard in terms of gender bias by focusing on Thomas Hardy’s narratives in the context of two divorce cases: Norton v. Melbourne (1836) and Crawford v. Crawford and Dilke (1886). It considers the Norton case as an illustration of women’s legal marginalisation, both in terms of their treatment within marriage and within the courtroom. It explains how Hardy exposes the patriarchal basis of legal judgment in the courtroom via the Norton case and how his legal fiction offers pseudo-legal representation in narratives that reflect the dialogic form of trial procedure.
