Thomas Hardy and the Proper Study of Mankind

by Simon Gatrell

Overview

Simon Gatrell offers a fresh and stimulating exploration of Hardy's account in fiction of the individual man or woman's relationship with various aspects of the encompassing world- with other men and women, with the aggregation known as society, with the natural and artificial environment, and with the supernatural. He focuses on the importance of community in Hardy's fiction,
especially on the ability of rural villages and towns to withstand the stresses of industrialized agriculture and the national standardization of education and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813929354
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	05/10/2015
Series:	Victorian Literature and Culture Series
Pages:	212
Sales rank:	1,137,285
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Simon Gatrell is Professor of English at the University of Georgia. His published works include Hardy the Creator: A Textual Biography, editions of several of Hardy's novels and fictional manuscripts, and a bibliography of George Crabbe (with Tony Bareham).

Table of Contents

"Under the Greenwood Tree" or the Mellsk Quire?; Hardy's dances; "The Return of the Native" - character and the natural environment; "The Trumpet-Major", "A Laodicean" and "Two on a Tower" - the man-made environment; "The Mayor of Casterbridge" - the fate of Michael Henchard's character; "Tess of the D'Urbervilles"; Angel Clare's story; sex, marriage and the decline of traditional community in "Jude the Obscure", together with a digression on the evils (or otherwise) of drink; "From the White Sea to Cape Horn" - Thomas Hardy and the wider world.