1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910760273603321

Autore

Ebbatson Roger

Titolo

Perception, Class and Environment in the Works of Thomas Hardy / / by Roger Ebbatson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer Nature Switzerland : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2024

ISBN

9783031401107

3031401107

Edizione

[1st ed. 2024.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XII, 154 p.)

Disciplina

809.3

Soggetti

Fiction

Literature, Modern - 19th century

European literature

Poetry

Fiction Literature

Nineteenth-Century Literature

European Literature

Poetry and Poetics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. ‘The Bride-Night Fire’: Hardy & the Voice of the Folk -- 2. A Pair of Blue Eyes: The Cliff-Scene and the Literary Sublime -- 3. Moments of (Technological) Vision -- 4. ‘The Withered Arm’ and History -- 5. (Un)Binding the Sheaves: Selfhood and Labour in Tess of the d’Urbervilles -- 6. ‘The Open’: Hardy and Jefferies -- 7. The d’Urberville Family Portraits: Faciality and Identity -- 8. Tess of the d’Urbervilles and the Fin de Siècle -- 9. Wayfaring -- 10. Hardy’s Lyric Voice: ‘Beeny Cliff’ -- 11. ‘The Face at the Casement’: Window Patterns in Hardy’s Poetry.

Sommario/riassunto

This book examines Thomas Hardy’s writing in both prose and poetry, focusing on issues of perception, ‘being’, class and environment. It illustrates the ways in which Hardy represents a social world which serves as a ‘horizon’ for the individual and explores the dialectic between the perceptible world and human consciousness. Ebbatson demonstrates how, in Hardy’s oeuvre, modern life becomes alienated



from its roots in rural life – individual freedom is achieved in works like Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure or The Woodlanders at the cost of personal insecurity and a deepening sense of homelessness. However, this development occurs against the marginalisation of dialect forms of speech. This book also explores how Hardy’s impressionist vision serves to undermine the prevailing conventions of plot structure. Roger Ebbatson is Visiting Professor at Lancaster University and Emeritus Professor at University of Worcester, UK. He is the author of numerous books, including Literature and Landscape (2013) and Landscapes of Eternal Return (2016).