BOOK REVIEWS 105 therefore near many of the fashionable restaurants." Even by the time I had read that far, however, the battle - to use an engaging phrase that occurs on Page 5was "enjoined." J. PERCY SMITH University ofGuelph THE VAST VENTURE: HARDY'S EPIC-DRAMA "THE DYNASTS," by Chester A. Garrison. Salzburg, Austria: Institut fur Englische Sprache und Literatur, UniversWit Salzburg, 1973.250 pp. $12.12. Professor Garrison's book, The Last Venture: Hardy'S Epic-Drama "The Dynasts," published in 1973, is Garrison's doctoral dissertation of 1964, as he informs us in his preface. During the period of nine years between the two dates, he has made only one change, the addition of a five-page appendix on Harold Orel's book, Thomas Hardy'S Epic-Drama: A Study of"The Dynasts," of 1963, which he had not seen when he sent the manuscript of his dissertation to the typist. And apparently he did not see Walter F. Wright's major study of Hardy's work, The Shaping of"The Dynasts": A Study in Thomas Hardy, of 1967. One wonders why Garrison failed to include Wright's book and thereby avoid much unnecessary repetition. He is original and thorough, however, in his consideration of The Dynasts as drama and its possible production as such. Although the usual critical view has been that epic and drama should be kept apart, Hardy sees the material of The Dynasts as history, but also as more than that: it is an interpretation of history itself and therefore a view of life. Hardy's decision to utilize in his drama a superstructure of the Spirits probably determined his attitude that his drama was meant for "mental" rather than stage performance. The work is, in fact, dramatic in form in that it consists primarily of dialogue, and it achieves the dimensions of epic particularly from the addition of the superstructure, which must be seen as an integral part of the drama. Hardy's overall plan, in order to prevent the possible monotony of a historical narrative covering a period of ten years, achieves continuity by such means as substantially tightening the drama with the superstructure by setting no two succeeding scenes in the same country and by having the tone of each distinctly different from the others; by introducing scenes which portray peoples pitifully involved in the machinations of the dynasts; by making Napoleon the central character but not the hero; by using dumb show, music, and dance; and by strengthing the imagery, as in consistently comparing armies to insects and martial bodies to grasses. Seen as a whole, then, The Dynasts has the "protracted proportions " ofa pageant, with unity of narrative and idea. Consistently throughout the work, Hardy seeks to explain on two levels the answer to the first question of the Prologue: "What of the Immanent Will and Its designs?" The Dynasts is the culminating achievement of Hardy's writing. His novels have a dramatic quality which enables him, in this major work, to unite his outstanding ability for scene-making with his technique of "panoramic contrast" arising from his "stereoscopic imagination," with which "he sees things solid." His method is that of the "camera-eye," a cinematic technique. He synthesizes the structure of this epic-drama by the "parallel montage" of the dialogue of the Spirits with the activities of the historical characters - all intricately intermin- 106 BOOK REVIEWS gled, not to tell the story of Napoleon's downfall but to show the workings of the Immanent Will. Hardy's poetry also has a strong dramatic quality, with the best being the aerial music of the Spirits. His blank verse serves, in part, as a "sustaining reminder" to the reader of the mechanical nature of life. Hardy thus amalgamates epic, dramatic, and lyric forms into something greater than anyone of them. An unusually resourceful technician, Hardy attempted, with much success (his drama has proved surprisingly suited to modern technical production, especially to radio), to reestablish a working relationship between poetry and drama. In spite, then, of several weaknesses, Garrison has perceptively and freshly seen The Dynasts as drama. One can only wish that he had taken adequate time and effort to...