Hardy Context Flashcards
Hardy’s Wessex?
Wessex is his own creation - he makes up place names. Spans several counties in the West of England. Distance from reality gives him power to comment on modern Britain without so much backlash.
Poetry?
Mixed reception. Traditional in the sense that he uses a lot of rhyme and rhythm. However, he uses rhyme in experimental ways and uses dialects at times. Sometimes uses Latin.
Time period?
1840-1928. Experienced new monarch…lived through Victorian era, WW1 and Boer War. Edwardian England. Overlap between Hardy and Eliot. …Marks transition point towards Modernism - half modernist and half traditional.
Novels?
Set in rural landscape….dealt with rural communities …. Pervasive sense of irony, usually dealing with idea of fate. Hardy was a successful novelist but stopped writing novels and turned exclusively to poetry later in life.
Backlash to Jude the Obscure because it was so controversial in how it depicted marriage - people described it as immoral. Jude the Obscure was his last novel and he switched to poetry soon after. The Bishop of Wakefield was so disgusted by Jude the Obscure that he burnt a copy - moral backlash.
Hardy’s background
Hardy was not from a particularly well-off background - he tried to make it look as if he had come from a prosperous family that had fallen upon hard times. He taught himself a lot and was widely read. His poetry is very similar to his novels - almost like condensed versions.
Hardy and Eliot
Eliot’s poems tend to be set in more urban environments, whereas Hardy almost exclusively focuses on the countryside.
Both explore the human condition - touch on ideas of morality and religion and how people fit into their environment.
Hardy worked as an architect - was involved in the construction of churches and had a deep fascination with churches. He was very attached and familiar with religion although his faith faded. Hardy often has a sense that he wants to believe it is unable to - outsider figure when it comes to religion. His father played violin for the church choir.
Characterises the lives of ordinary people in a more affectionate manner than Eliot.
He married his childhood sweetheart who features in his novel ‘A pair of blue eyes.’
He and Emma lived together but became estranged - lived in different rooms and rarely interacted.
His wife died in his arms - profoundly shocked him and inspired him to write a sequence of poems about his wife, dwelling on the past and what should have been. He married again.
His heart was buried in Dorset and the rest of him in Westminster.
