Abstract

ABSTRACTHardy's preoccupation in his poetry with time and change is a critical commonplace but has never been examined in detail as a stand-alone subject. Hardy was well aware that it placed him in a tradition whose roots lay in Classical and Renaissance literature and involves the ancient and enduring philosophical debate about permanence and change. But like the great poets before and after him who shared his preoccupation with mutability, he imposed upon it his own distinctive imprint, a melancholy recording of lamentable change in the personal domain: from youth to age, innocence to experience, illusion to disillusion, bliss to bitterness. However, although convinced, like Shelley, that “Nought may endure but Mutability”, he seeks in the natural world signs of permanence that defy as well as characterize it, and, on a few occasions, finds in the experience of love ecstatic moments whose perfection is a taste of eternity and unassailable by Time.

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