HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE  H0095 11/28/00  "RECENT HARDY PUBLICATIONS"
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From: "schweik" <schweik@fredonia.edu>
Subject: Thomas Hardy Remembered
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 20:22:23 GMT

I and a number of others have been working to assemble
a checklist of recent Hardy publications, and in the course
of that work I've come across some publications which are 
earlier than 2000 but which somehow seem to have been 
overlooked by standard bibliographies. They will all be 
included in the Checklist, but I thought I might give
Hardy-L
members a preview of a couple of them.

*Feminist Legal Studies* is not one of the journals commonly
covered in bibliographies of Victorian or modern British 
literature. But in volume 7 (1999), pp. 299-316 there is an
article by Melanie Williams titled "'Is Alec a Rapist?'--
Cultural Connotations of 'Rape' and 'Seduction'--A Reply to
Professor John Sutherland." 

In his book *Is Heathcliff a Murderer--Puzzles in 19th
Century Fiction* (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996), Sutherland
included a 
chapter "Is Alec a Rapist?" (pp. 202-212) in which he
undertook
to show by close analysis of Hardy's text that Tess was a 
"willing if misguided, participant of her own undoing."
Melanie
Williams provides a close analysis of Sutherland's argument
and concludes that it was tendentious and biased. In the
process she also over other analyses of what happened in the
Chase and brings to bear her legal training as well.  It's a
piece much worth reading--and likely to be overlooked, while
Sutherland's popular book will probably be widely read. 

A second, and very different, item I also found overlooked
was
a pair of audiotapes titled *Thomas Hardy Remembered*
(Tiverton:
Halsgrove Productions, 1998). I had never heard of this two-
cassette production. One of the tapes titled "Memories of 
Hardy" consists of readings from interviews and
recollections 
of persons who knew Hardy; the other, "Thomas Hardy: His
Life
and Work" is a remarkably fine biographical account, 
interspersed with readings from his works, by James Gibson. 
It's an exceptionally fine piece of work that I thought
ought
to be included in the "Checklist" among some others that
seem
to have been overlooked. 

One of the advantages of engaging in a project like the 
Checklist is a greater likelihood of coming across gems like
these!

Bob Schweik

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