Abstract
The fluctuation between highbrow and lowbrow literature seems to be at the heart of Thomas Hardy’s career as a novelist, torn between success and artistic uprightness as he was. The early Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) represents a case in point of such a dilemma. Indeed, the spread of serialised literature, mainly thanks to the advent of sensation fiction, enabled Hardy to “write a good story”, and sensational and melodramatic episodes in Far from the Madding Crowd show many similarities with other lowbrow novels of the time, full of unexpected twists. Even though the dominant genres of the pastoral and the tragic prevail in Far from the Madding Crowd, proving that Hardy initiated a transition with other more respectable genres, lower forms allowed him to convey a disruptive discourse within the book, and to create an original mix between high and popular forms which will later become one of his hallmarks.
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