Thomas Hardy 18401928

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Thomas Hardy1840-1928

• A Bridge Between
• The Victorian Age and
• the 20th Century Modernism

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Thomas Hardys Work

• 19 novels
• Many poems
• Short stories
• An epic drama
• The Dynasts

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Hardys Novels of Character and Environment

• 1872
• Under the Greenwood Tree
• The first novel to gain the critics attention

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Thomas Hardys Novels of Character and
Environment

• Far From the Madding Crowd
• 1874
• Magical setting
• Conversation
• Setting
• Rural chorus

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Thomas Hardys Novels of Character and
Environment

• Return of the Native
• 1878
• Venn character
• Egdon Heath is a character
• Best novel for character, atmosphere, plotting

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Thomas Hardys Novels of Character and Environment

• The Mayor of Casterbridge
• 1886
• Critics consider this novel Hardys most
  classically tragic

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Thomas Hardys Novels of Character and
Environment

• Tess of the DUrbervilles
• 1891
• Masterpiece for its frankness
• Bitterness of final tragedy

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Thomas Hardys Novels of Character and
Environment

• Jude the Obscure
• 1895
• Hardys most modern novel
• Rooted in Victorian literary conventions
• Conflict of spirit vs flesh

Christminster, from Marygreen
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First serious novelist to

• Use novel for the tragic vision of life
• Use farmers and peasants as stuff of tragedy

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Modernism

• People are isolated and alienated from everything
  that makes life tolerable
• Friends
• Family
• Dreams
• Hopes
• Faith in future

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Modernism, continued

• A strong and conscious break with traditional
  forms and techniques of expression
• Alienation, loss, and despair
• Rejects history, and the recorded society
• Rejects traditional values and rhetoric

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Modernism, continued

• Elevates the individual and inner man over
  societal man
• Prefers the unconscious to the self-conscious
• Anti-intellectual, celebrates passion and will
  over reason and systemic morality
• Existentialism grows within this

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Central Themes of Hardys Works
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Chance and Time Control Mens Lives
People are victims of circumstance Immutable Will
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Sexual Love Leads to Grief
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The Land Is Alive,Does Not Care about People,
and May Even Be Malignant
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Earth Goes Back Millions of Years and Abides,
While Man Perishes

• Moody Settings
• pre-Determine Characters Fates

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The Land, and Its People, Abide

• Those who live closest to the land survive
• Those who fight the land are crushed

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Time Erodes Relationships
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Classes Conflict
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The Old and the New Conflict
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Life Is a Thing to Be Put up With
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Selfish Love Contrasts with Unselfish Love
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Character is Fate

• Men and women are authors of their own doom

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Profoundly Pessimistic

• Humanity inevitably defeated, no matter how
  valiant

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Influences

• Charles Darwins Origin of the Species
• Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis

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Determinism

• All acts of the will are the result of cause
  which determine them not Free Will, but
  controlled from without
• Fate (Greek tragedy)
• God Predestination (Calvinist Reading)
• Scientific law (Naturalism)
• Economic forces (Marxist reading)

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Determinism, continued

• Gender
• Race
• Class
• Physical Stature
• Physical Nature
• Culture/Society