Abstract
These Hardy poems voice the disillusionment of two passionate yet misunderstood speakers about to commit suicide. The genre of the dramatic monologue is here used by Hardy as a model to explore and expand on. The poems do not follow the traditional narrative and subjective lines of the Victorian genre, but work towards an ironic rewriting of it, as for the two speakers self-assertion relies on literal self-dramatisation, and paradoxically involves self-destruction. Through a series of embedded effects, Hardy's dramatic monologues thus become « theatres of the voice » (Henri Meschonnic), showing that Hardy's poetry truly signals the transition from Victorian literature to Modernism.
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