Hardy and nineteenth-century poetry and poetics

Abstract

Hardy’s reputation continues to be based mainly on the 14 novels he penned between 1871 and 1895, including the most famous three: Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Contemporary reviewers praised Hardy’s fiction particularly for its reality effects, its memorable female characters, and for its creation of the half-real and the half-mythic Wessex. More recently, his fiction has been valuably reinterpreted through a literary criticism and theory relying less on traditional, realist-based assumptions than in the past. If he had composed no poetry at all, he would still be remembered as a key Victorian writer. Yet Thomas Hardy considered himself first and foremost a poet, just as he considered poetry the most important of literary genres.KeywordsLyric ExpressionDouble MeaningHardy StudyGrayish LeafEngagement RingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.