Thomas Hardy, Poet

The poems of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) are key to understanding 19th, 20th and even 21st century poetry. This collection of fresh essays sheds new light on Hardy’s poems—some of which have received little critical attention—from a variety of thematic and analytical approaches, offering a detailed picture of how his works are currently being read.
The contributors discuss why Hardy’s poetic genius is less and less overshadowed by his career as a novelist and highlight his passionate attention to small details, his delight in “noticing things” and his “eye for…mysteries.”

Adrian Grafe is a professor of English at Artois University in France. He was an associate professor at the Sorbonne for 10 years, has published broadly on poetry, and was named a Fellow of the English Association in 2011.
Laurence Estanove teaches English at Paris-Descartes University, France. The author of many essays on Hardy’s novels and poems, she is a cofounder of FATHOM (French Association for Thomas Hardy Studies) and coeditor of its online journal.

Edited by Adrian Grafe and Laurence Estanove
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 232
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9538-2
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2057-2
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction (Adrian Grafe and Laurence Estanove) 1
I—Landscape into Memory
“Thinking Like a Mountain”? Hardy’s Poetic Vision of “Environment” (Adrian Tait) 10
Reclaiming English Bones: Corporeal Commemoration in Hardy’s War Poems (Melanie East) 26
“Wild Wavering”: Between Pastoral and Elegy (Farhi Öz) 44
II—Misalignments
Rhyming Events and the Pessimistic Muse (Stephen Tardif) 60
The End Game: Thomas Hardy’s Looking Glass (Richard D. Beards) 75
From Pessimism to Idealism: The Pressure of Paradox (Laurence Estanove) 82
III—Specters of Doubt and Faith
Agnosticism and Freethinking: The Influence of Leslie Stephen (Ilaria Mallozzi) 100
The Shadow of God in Poems of the Past and the Present (Stéphanie Bernard) 116
Uncomfortably Numb: “In Tenebris” (Adrian Grafe) 133
IV—Poetic Craft and Accidentals
Messy Feelings, Tidy Forms: “Poems of 1912–13” (Emily Taylor Merriman) 148
Challenging Time: Philological and Lexicographical Landscape (Emilie Loriaux) 163
Hardy’s Crafting of Barnes (Heather Hawkins) 179
Punctuating Voice and Space (Charles Lock) 193
Epilogue: The Transcendence of Things Seen (Michael Edwards) 207
About the Contributors 217
Index 219

“Concentrates on [Hardy’s] positive contributions to Victorian poetics…interesting essays…recommended”—Choice; “This is an excellent collection of essays: far-reaching, consistently thoughtful, frequently insightful and indeed riveting. They range from the treatment of landscape to the placement of a comma, but the volume as a whole is a sustained effort at critique and celebration.”—Phillip Mallett, University of St Andrews