Thomas Hardy in our time /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Taking into account the latest criticism, Langbaum discusses Hardy's fiction and poetry from various contemporary points of view so as to show Hardy as a still-powerful literary presence.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• The Issue of Hardy's Poetry
• Versions of Pastoral
• Diversions from Pastoral
• The Minimisation of Sexuality
• Notes
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This interesting study fits Hardy into F.R. Leavis's "great tradition" by placing him between George Eliot's realistic objectivity, morally serious exploration of society, interest in women, and psychological approach to characterization and D.H. Lawrence's 20th-century evolution into modernism. Langbaum (Univ. of Virginia) argues that all three authors begin with provincial scenes and explore human nature and society through the medium of sophisticated ideas. Thus, this refreshing study enters a boom of recent Hardy discourse by treading between the ranks of feminist and politically radical critics to deal with literary history and textual analysis. Drawing on the major novels, the author concentrates on several current issues dealt with by Hardy--sexuality, myth, nature, psychology. Langbaum demonstrates how Hardy's psychological insights into unconsciousness and sexuality use exaggerations that verge on fantasy and suggest modernist symbolizations of the unconsciousness. He insists that Hardy's greatest nature poetry is found in his novels, e.g., The Return of the Native (1878), and resuscitates his "last" novel, The Well-Beloved (1892). Including useful notes and index, this stimulating study complements such recent studies as Dale Kramer's Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Thomas Hardy (1979) and Rosemarie Morgan's Cancelled Words: Rediscovering Thomas Hardy (1992). Recommended for college collections of Victorian fiction. S. A. Parker; Hiram College