Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

1
Thomas Hardy(1840-1928)

• If asked to state his profession, without
  hesitation Hardy would have declared himself a
  poet rather than a novelist. He began to write
  poetry in the late 1850s, in his early teens, and
  continued until his death at the age of
  eighty-seven.

2
Early Years

• Thomas Hardy was born in Upper Bockhampton in
  Dorset, in the west of England. His father was a
  successful mason and offered his son a good
  education. His mother fostered in him a love of
  literature, at school he learned to read Latin,
  while at home he taught himself Greek. When he
  was sixteen he finished his formal education.
• As his father was a master mason, the sons first
  ambition was to design buildings. At sixteen he
  was apprenticed to an ecclesiastical architect,
  John Hicks. His employer enjoyed the classics,
  and allowed his employees time to read. At the
  same time, he was encouraged in his literary
  interests by a Cambridge scholar, Horace Moule,
  who became Hardys friend and mentor. He
  introduced him to the Greek classics in the
  original, literary criticism and progressive
  theology. However a career in this profession did
  not present itself as a practical possibility.
  Having finished his apprenticeship, he left for
  London in 1862 and became assistant to an
  architect, Arthur Bloomfield.
• Hardy was determined to become a great poet and
  he began writing in earnest in his spare time. He
  sent his verses to literary magazines throughout
  the capital but none were accepted. In 1867,
  bored by his work and disappointed by his lack of
  success as a poet, he moved back to Dorset.

3
The Novelist

• With an attitude that he had little to lose,
  Hardy attempted his first novel in the summer of
  1867, The Poor Man and the Lady, and in doing so
  set himself on the road of being one of the most
  well-loved of all Victorian novelists. Like his
  verse, he wrote novels from an unselfconscious
  view of reality. Although this first novel was
  not accepted for publication, his second one,
  Desperate Remedies, was published in 1871.
  Thirteen more novels were to follow. With his
  novel, Far from the Madding Crowd, he had made
  enough in royalties to propose to Emma Lavinia
  Gifford, a woman he had fallen in love with while
  restoring a church in Cornwall four years
  previously. The marriage did not go well and
  after her illness (she suffered from a mental
  illness) and subsequent death, he wrote many love
  poems, evocations of her as she was in her
  air-blue gown half a century before.
• Although writing novels gave him financial
  success, as a form it remained for him a
  compromise to poetry. In 1895 when his latest
  novel, Jude the Obscure, was lampooned, Jude the
  Obscene, he turned back to poetry. Ignoring the
  critics poor reception of his verse, he continued
  writing and published eight volumes between 1898
  and 1928.

4
The Poet

• Thomas Hardy and Gerard Manley Hopkins are two
  Victorian poets, who stand as beacons for modern
  poetry. While Hopkins died before the twentieth
  century began, Hardy lived on until 1928. Hopkins
  might be characterized as looking upwards, while
  Hardy on the other hand was looking backwards. As
  has been mentioned, Hardys had an
  unselfconscious view of reality. He cannot be
  associated with other Victorian poets like
  Swinburne or Tennyson, whose style was more
  decorative and abstract.
• Todays readers enjoy Hardys poems as much as
  his novels. He himself was very modest about
  them, and called them unadjusted impressions,
  which however might, by humbly recording diverse
  readings of phenomena as they are forced upon us
  by chance and change, lead to a philosophy. He
  is the first of the modern poets, who are
  suspicious of writing well. He broke away from
  poetic diction to a quite unexpected vocabulary.
  Against Matthew Arnolds disparagement, Hardy
  said that, a certain provincialism of feeling is
  invaluable. It is of the essence of
  individuality, and is largely made up of that
  crude enthusiasm without which no great thoughts
  are thought, no great deeds done. The
  awkwardness was intended to give a sense of
  penetrating through the façade of language and
  syntax as well as the deceptions of circumstance.
  Younger poets like W.H. Auden studying at Oxford,
  read Hardy, when they were looking for
  inspiration for their own craft. Auden wrote
  later, My first Master was Thomas Hardy, and I
  think I was lucky in my choice. He was a good
  poet, perhaps a great one, but not too good. Much
  as I loved him, even I could see that his diction
  was often clumsy and forced and that a lot of his
  poems were plain bad. This gave me hope, where a
  flawless poet would have given me despair. He was
  modern without being too modernIf I looked
  through his spectacles, at least I was conscious
  of a certain eyestrain. Lastly his metrical
  variety, his fondness for complicated stanza
  forms, were an invaluable training in the craft
  of making.

5
Late Years

• With the poets belief that everything was a
  worthwhile subject for his work, he wrote of war,
  nature, friendship, bereavement and love and
  marriage. The collection published in 1914,
  Satires of circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries
  explore the private relationship between husband
  and wife, inspired by the death of his wife, Emma
  Gifford. The collection Moments of vision and
  Miscellaneous Verses which followed in 1917
  contain some of Hardys finest poems, prompted by
  the outbreak of the First World War which came as
  a great shock to the poet. before Marching and
  After commemorates the loss of his cousin, Frank
  George, while In Time of the Breaking of
  Nations , describing three different yet
  interconnected pastoral scenes, captures the
  futility of war and the greater importance of
  human life over territorial gain.
• Hardy had no confidence in a supernatural god,
  but he was fond for a pantheon of forces. These
  are the demiurges who move us pathetically about.
  They are animated, Hardy seems to imply, not by
  malignity but by indifference as in Hap and
  The Subalterns. Hardys universe offers a
  grotesque version of the traditional one, because
  in place of an imminent divinity he substitutes
  an imminent indifference. Though many cite him as
  pessimistic, he is characterized nonetheless by
  compassion for humankind and his conscious
  purpose is always to defend and fortify, insofar
  as possible, the human.

6
The Mayor of Casterbridge

• Homework Due Wednesday 17th August
• Find the page number and highlight the passage,
  then make a summary to present in class
• Find 2 examples in the novel of Hardys
  understanding of the countryside, its laborers,
  life and villages/towns
• Find 2 examples of Hardys expert knowledge of
  architecture
• Find an example of Hardys interest in Dorset
  history
• Find examples of Hardys understanding of human
  life being controlled by indifferent forces
• Find examples of his compassion for humankind