Literary Allusion and Indebtedness

Abstract

‘People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? … If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be a small balance in my favour’, Goethe told Eckermann. Hardy made no such general admission; he indicated writers who were great masters and examplars to him, and emphasized that he was a ‘born bookworm’. That, and ‘that alone’, was unchanging in him, he added (at the opening of the chapter ‘Student and Architect’ in his Life). It may not occasion surprise therefore to find that his works contain frequent literary references, allusions, and quotations; that other writers’ images gave him narrative and scenic ideas; and that, like Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights, he sometimes, as a means of furthering his own fiction, adapted or borrowed episodes, situations, and details from literature which impressed him.