Academic literature on the topic 'Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 Dynasts'

Abstract:This article considers the ways in which clothing is represented in selected work of Thomas Hardy in the context of wider social and economic change in nineteenth-century English rural society. While taking into account the difficulties of using fictional literature in this way, I suggest that it is precisely Hardy's subjectivity that makes his observations so compelling and that his perception of change lies at the heart of his representation of dress. I endeavour to show how in his writing, the perceived tension between an unchanging, idealised, countryside increasingly subjected to the influence of an urban culture is frequently expressed, either directly or metaphorically, in terms of clothing. The social and economic changes, including agricultural change, of which Hardy was so acutely aware, help to account for the disappearance of traditional features of rural dress, such as the smock-frock and the sun-bonnet. In their place were adopted styles influenced by notions of ‘fashion’ and made available through the process of mass production which Hardy associated primarily with towns. For Hardy, the influence of urban fashions alienated people from that individuality and speciality in dress which formed a link with their environment and ultimately their own past and history.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is one of the great English novelists of the late Victorian era. Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are among his most famous novels. If he was not directly influenced by Gustave Flaubert’s aesthetics, Hardy was very much inspired by the heroine of Madame Bovary. Indeed, quite a few of Hardy’s female characters, whether in his novels or in his short stories, suffer with varying degrees from “bovarysme’, the disease of imagination and affectivity which is one of Emma Bovary’s central features. This paper aims to shed light on the posterity of Flaubert’s character through Eustacia Vye, the heroine of The Return of the Native, to show to what extent she represents not a pale imitation but an original variation on an essential model of Western literature.

Cette etude se divise en quatre parties. J'ai commence par faire une approche biographique et j'ai essaye de traiter de la presence feminine dans la vie de thomas hardy ainsi que du role et des consequences de cette presence a la fois sur sa vie et sur son oeuvre. La deuxieme partie a pour but de nous introduire dans le milieu social des romans, c'est-a-dire de delimiter leur contexte social. Je commence par etudier la cellule familiale, les relations qui existent entre les jeunes et toutes les varietes de relations amoureuses que les personnages entretiennent avant le mariage ainsi que les valeurs sociales qui influencent leurs comportements et meme les determinent. La troisieme partie traite principalement de l'institution du mariage, de la vie conjugale qui en decoule et des relations sexuelles extra-maritales. La quatrieme partie est un essai sur le jeu de l'amour dans un contexte historique. J'ai essaye d'en donner une definition et de montrer l'evolution de la notion de l'amour. J'ai essaye en outre de mettre en evidence et de definir les differentes etapes et experiences de l'amour en accord avec les attitudes manifestees par les personnages des romans de thomas hardy. Cette partie etudie a la fois le pessimisme de hardy et son espoir que les relations amoureuses puissent s'ameliorer
This study of love in the novels of thomas hardy is devided mainly in four parts. The first part deals with the feminine presence in hardy's life and its influence on his novels. Since love is mainly presented in the wessex novels in a social context, i briefly managed to deal with the wessex society as far as its influence on the love relations is concerned. As well, i tried to deal with the different love relations before marriage and, of course, hardy's attitudes towards them. The failure of the marriage constitution to organise the immortal puzzle of the sexual relationships between the sexes is dealt with at length in the third part. The different kinds of the game of love, such as presented in hardy's novels, and how in the very nature of these games reside the germs of their failure and tragic ends, constitute the body of the fourth and the last part of this study

This is a study of the meaning of freedom in Thomas Hardy's fiction. The first section of the thesis is concerned with the influences in Hardy's thought and view of man and man's position in the universe. Attention will be given mainly to three sources of influence on Hardy's thought. Darwinian theories of evolution and the secular movement of the nineteenth century and the change they brought about in man's view of himself and his state in the world can be seen clearly in Hardy's personal writings as well as his fiction. His childhood contact with Dorset folk beliefs and superstitions can also be perceived to have a great influence not only on his art but on his thought and outlook as well. In the second section an investigation in detail of the meaning of freedom in four of Hardy's novels will be carried out. In the novels, man will be seen as essentially free and not an automaton or a plaything of necessity or nature or fate, for example. However, we shall see that man's freedom of action as well as of choice is severely limited but not annihilated by a number of factors working from within and from without man's character. In this, nature both as phenomena and as system plays a great part. Society with its standards, norms, laws and implied understandings is another contributing factor in constraining man's freedom. Man also has his freedom limited by chance happenings and coincidences that he cannot control. "Character is fate", quotes Hardy from Novalis, and everywhere in the novels we see characters' destinies linked tightly with their personal traits, unconscious urges and peculiarities of character either passed to them by heredity or formed by early life conditioning or both. Nevertheless, man is responsible in Hardy's view because he has that essential sense of freedom; and hence that tragic flavour that tinges Hardy's fiction which would have been impossible with machine-like people as characters.

La these majeure de cette etude est l'existence d'une ecriture-flux provoquee par l'invasion de l'inconscient dans ce que hardy nomme + the flow of inventiveness ;. Cette ecriture souterraine, a lire dans le filigrane du discours logique, est definie comme l'inscription du sujet dans le texte, qui doit etre envisage comme matiere linguistique et aussi dans une perspective anthropologique : hardy valorise son + living style ; parce qu'il considere le texte comme etant necessairement produit par un corps-sujet. Cela nous place d'emblee dans une optique materialiste, et nous posons l'hypothese selon laquelle le romancier fait davantage passer la sensation que le sens dans son ecrite intuitivement plus qu'on ne la comprend intellectuellement. Grace a + the spiritual eye ;, l'artiste visionnaire et intuitif accede a l'infra-reel (deeper reality) par entrevision (mental tactility), tandis que l'oeil empirique percoit seulement la surface phenomenale (scenic reality). Les influences theoriques sur la pensee hardyenne evoquent le +flux; : du flux desirant (spinoza) au flux vital (evolutionnisme spencerien), et du flux d'idees et de perceptions (empirisme humien) au flux d'inconscient (vouloir schopenhauerien), tout participe de ce que hardy appelle "a general flux of things". La fluidite narrative necessite une micro-lecture symptomatologique, afin de percevoir les traits distinctifs de cette ecriture dans laquelle le non-dit prevaut sur le dit. C'est dans la richesse figurale qu'on decouse la multiplicite relationnelle entre l'absence de style et l'absence a soi du heros. La douleur existentielle rouvre episodiquement sa felure originaire et declenche un processus dissociatif au cours duquel il quitte le reel et se dissemine dans le dehors. Afin d'eviter la totale destruction de son image du corps, il fusionne avec un percept exterieur qui lui permet de regagner sa consistance en le sensorialisant. Si la felure pousse l'individu a se dissoudre dans le dehors, l'inspiration creatrice doit egalement pousser l'ecrivain a dissoudre son etre dans son dire, puisque finalement, comme l'ecrit deleuze, " ecrire n'a pas d'autre fonction : etre un flux qui se conjugue avec d'autres flux
The main thesis of this study is the existence under the logical discourse of a fluctuating writing, produced by the primacy of the unconscious in what thomas hardy calls +the flow of inventiveness ;. This subterranean writing can be defined as the presence of the author within his text, which incites the reader to consider it not only from the linguistic point of view, but also in an anthropological perspective (as hardy suggests when he valorizes his + living style ;). The writer having a body as well as a mind, hardy's style is analysed in this study from a materialistic viewpoint: the novelist appears to give greater importance to sensation than to meaning in his work, which is rather intuitively felt than intellectualized. For in hardy's opinion, the visionary artist can reach +the deeper reality; thanks to his + spiritual eye ; and to his + mental tactility ;, while +the empirical eye ; can only reach + the scenic reality ;. All the theoretical influences on hardy's thought evoke the +flux;, as the novelist himself seems to confirm when he speaks of+ the general flux of things ; : we specifically refer to the flux of desire (spinoza), the vital flux (herbert spencer's evolutionism), the flux of ideas and perceptions (hume's empiricism), and the flux of the unconscious (hardy's immanent will closely resembles schopenhauer's wille). Such a narrative fluidity requires a close reading, in which the unsaid prevails over the said. The multi-connection between the + absence of styte ; and the + absent-mindedness ; of the hardyan hero is to be traced in the figural richness of the text. His existential pain occasionally reopens his original crack, and triggers off the process of psychic dissociation. Then the hero leaves the real world, and is completely dispersed into his environment. In order to prevent the total destruction of his body image, he amalgamates himself with a percept which + sensorializes ; him, and thereby enables him to regain his consistency. If the hero's psychic crack prompts him to dissolve himself into the outside, the writer's creative power must also prompt him to dissolve his being into his style, since we admit with gilles deleuze that + writing has no other function than to be a flux which combines with other flux

Dans les romans de hardy, la collusion de l'amour et de la mort se traduit par une esthetique de l'eros cruel revelatrice d'un dualisme psychique et d'une dissociation victorienne du corps et de l'esprit et par une esthetique de l'agape genereuse qui, pour paraitre moins mortifere qu'eros, n'en est pas moins une esthetique du sacrifice de soi dont hardy raille le caractere souvent fatal et vain en parodiant les mythes de la chute et de la crucifixion. La complementarite de ces deux esthetiques s'inscrit dans un trajet initiatique douloureux qui, plus qu'une simple apologie du retour a l'ordre compromis par les exces d'eros et plus qu'une simple soumission a l'ethique et aux conventions litteraires victoriennes du "happy ending", est une tentative sincere de reconciliation de l'eros paien et de l'agape chretienne, une adhesion au bonheur conjugal, une victoire -meme temporaire- de l'amour sur la mort. En quete du sens a donner a l'amour et a la mort, hardy adopte une strategie du defi, de l'ecart, irreve- rencieuse mais liberation, en parodiant le mythe de l'androgyne et le mythe courtois. Demythifiant ainsi le desir de fusion androgyne, la quete erotique de la transcendance et la divinisation de l'aime -qui aboutissent inevitablement a l'echec et masquent un secret desir de mort, hardy met en doute la dimension mystique et metaphysique de l'amour
In hardy's novels the collusion of love and death is revealed by the cruelty of pagan love (eros), which hides the dualism of human psyche and the victorian split of body and spirit, and by christian love itself (agape) - though generous and apparently less deadly than eros- that implies self-sacrifice whose fatal character hardy denounces in his parody of the myths of the fall and crucifixion. The complmentarity of eros and agape is expressed in a painful initiation which goes beyond a mere praise of the return to an order compromised by the excesses of eros and beyond a mere submission to victorian ethics and the victorian literary conventions of "happy ending". It is a sincere attempt at reconciliation of pagan love and christian love, the expression of hardy's faith in a happy marriage and also a victory -even temporary- of love over death. Looking for a meaning to give to love and death, hardy adopts a stategy of challenge and freedom as he chooses to swerve from the myths of the androgyne and arthurian romance. His demythification of the desire for androgynous fusion, of the quest for erotic transcendence and of the divinisation of the loved one -which result in failure and hide a secret desire for death- is a questioning of any mythical or metaphysical dimension of love whatsoever

L'oeuvre de fiction de Thomas Hardy a longtemps été écartée du "́canon" de la littérature anglaise. Elle a posé et pose encore, il est vrai, à la critique bien des problèmes idéologiques et esthétiques. La surface humano-libérale et réaliste des textes du romancier s'ávère en effet troublée par une vision sombre et absurdiste de l'existence, et par des contradictions formelles. Cette étude n'a pas pour objet de chercher à atténuer le pessimisme de l'oeuvre ou d'effacer ses incohérences, mais au contraire de les mettre en lumière, de souligner précisément la centralité du thème de l'aliénation dans "les romans de caractère et d'environnement", en mettant en perspective ses différentes manifestations et en attirant l'attention finalement sur les parallèles entre niveaux intra et extra-diégétiques. L'auteur ébranle le mythe d'un sujet souverain et unitaire : les personnages de ses romans et nouvelles sont exilés, décentrés, menacés de fragmentation et de dissolution par des forces extérieures et intérieures. La représentation aliène son propre discours en affichant ses divisions et ses apories. Hardy annonce une forme de modernité, c'est-à-dire la crise de la mimésis. De nouveaux modes de réception de l'oeuvre littéraire sont ainsi engagés : le sujet de la lecture cesse d'être un consommateur passif du texte et doit se transformer en producteur actif
Thomas Hardy's fictional work has long been excluded from the " canon " of English literature. It has indeed confronted and still confronts critics with numerous ideological and aesthetic problems. The liberal,humanist and realist surface of the novelist's texts turns out to be disrupted by a gloomy and absurdist vision of existence and by formal discrepancies. The aim of this study is not to try to tone down the pessimism of the work or to explain away its inconsistencies but, on the contrary, to highlight them, to underline the central role played by the theme of alienation in the " Novels of character and environment ", precisely, by putting into perspective its various expressions and eventually by drawing attention to the parallels between the intra- and extra-diegetic levels. The author undermines the myth of a sovereign and unitary subject : characters in his novels and short stories are exiled, decentred, threatened with fragmentation and dissolution through external and internal forces. Representation alienates its own discourse by exhibiting its divisions and aporias. Hardy heralds a form of modernity, namely the crisis of mimesis. New modes of reception for literary works are thus involved : the reading subject is no longer a passive consumer of the text but must turn into an active producer

Thomas Hardy est le plus souvent considéré comme un auteur victorien. Cependant, son dernier roman intitulé Jude the Obscure annonce la modernité qui éclot à l'aube du vingtième siècle, lorsque l'auteur se tourne vers la poésie et qu'un autre écrivain, nommé Joseph Conrad, rédige ce roman aux mille voix qu'est Lord Jim. Derrière leurs œuvres se profile la réécriture de la tragédie qui renaît sous les espèces du tragique. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, à la tonalité pastorale parfois, rappelle les tragédies familiales des grands auteurs grecs. Avec Jude the Obscure, la ville a remplacé la campagne, la société a inéluctablement pris la place des dieux. Cette chute du divin s'affirme dans Lord Jim où le romantisme côtoie l'éclatement de la représentation dans une écriture moderne, puis plus nettement encore au travers des paysages blancs et froids de Under Western Eyes. Ces œuvres, tant par leurs différences que par leurs ressemblances, mettent en lumière le renouvellement qu'opère la modernité sur les genres et les formes du passé. Le style tragique utilise la lettre pour mieux la faire voler en éclat et s'oriente sur le pan de la voix : celle de l'écrivain qui se fait poète, celle de Jude qui se laisse bercer par son imaginaire, ou encore celle de l'indicible vérité qui borde l'horreur et surprend le lecteur occidental du texte conradien
Thomas Hardy is usually considered a Victorian writer. Nonetheless, his last novel entitled Jude the Obscure announced the era of modernity which started with the twentieth century, just before he abandoned fiction to become a poet, while Joseph Conrad was writing that deep-resounding novel entitled Lord Jim. With rising modernity in the background, it appears that their works allowed for the rewriting of tragedy, now revived as the tragic. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, whose tone may sound pastoral, recalls traditional Greek tragedies. In Jude the Obscure, urban settings have replaced the countryside, and society has definitely been substituted for the gods. Such a defeat of the divine is brought even further with Conrad : in Lord Jim, the romantic undertones are incessantly balanced by the explosion of the conventions of representation; the modern age is clearly perceptible in the white and cold landscapes of Under Western Eyes. These four novels, through their similarities and differences, show how modernity operates on genres and old forms of writing by regenerating them. The tragic as a style uses the letter the better to shatter it : so it does when the voice of the poet can be heard through the murmurs of Jude's imagination, or when unspeakable truth comes close to the horror and startles the Western reader of the Conradian text