HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H01101 12/14/01 "A NOVICE'S REQUEST FOR CRITICAL COMMENTARY" =============================================================================== From: EArnavoud@aol.com Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 17:11:35 EST Subject: A request from a novice I am a recent convert to Hardy. After just one novel - Tess - I dashed out and bought two sets of his available works. I am struck by his immense and profound sympathy for human suffering and his powerful protest against those corrupted social mores and regulations that so blight relations between human beings. In Tess one also notes that inexhaustible striving of human individuals to overcome and recover from the cruel blows that life fequently delivers. These virtues decidedly override all the artistic faults that may be attributed to him. My request: Can anyone indicate where to find critical commentaries on Hardy's social-philosophic and humanist conceptions as they unfold in his novels. Thanks Eddie ========== Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 16:07:15 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: A request from a novice Welcome to the Hardy List, Eddie. I am glad you have discovered some of the qualities we all find so compelling in TESS. However, to direct you to critical commentaries on the broad issues you are interested in would be a formidible task. So much has been written that it would be almost impossible to tell you where to begin. Unless you have some particular project in mind, such as a paper or report to complete, I would suggest forgetting about criticism at this point and just immersing yourself in the primary material. A good grasp of Hardy's philosophy can be deduced from his novels, and particularly from his poetry. After that take a look at a good biography, Michael Millgate's is generally considered the definitive one. Hardy's own autobiography, _The Life and Works of Thomas Hardy_, also edited by Michael Millgate, is another indispensible source of information. If you haven't already done so, take some time to browse through the contents of the TTHA web-site. Among other things Professor Schweik's LINKS, and the Forum Archives may contain material of interest to you as well. Wishing You Good reading, Betty Cortus hardycor@mailhost2.csusm.edu ========== From: Tduphare@aol.com Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 14:09:51 EST Subject: Re: A request from a novice "These virtues decidedly override all the artistic faults that may be attributed to him." Would someone please elucidate the "artistic faults" generally attributed to Hardy in academia? In my lay opinion Hardy's prose is artistically beautiful and poignant. He is my favorite novelist not only for what he says, but for how he says it. ========== Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 21:34:55 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: A request from a novice Eddie: George Wotton's *Thomas Hardy: Towards a Materialist Criticism* (Gill and Macmillan / Barne& Noble Books, 1985) touches on the historical, social, aesthetic and ideological determinants of Hardy's novels. But I would still recommend as essential reading, Lennart Bjork's (ed) *The Literary Notes of Thomas Hardy*, 2 vols, ( Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1974). It's not simply that the latter details (and dates) many of Hardy's philosophical, social, historical, literary, artistic jottings (which of course tells us a little about what he was thinking about at any given time) but that Bjork also gives the sources of these jottings. Thus in going to the literary source, say *The Saturday Review* (of which Hardy was a regular reader) one can absorb much of what Hardy was absorbing while he was more consciously taking notes for a kind of commonplace book called the "1867" notebook (it goes up to the late 1880s). Hope this helps, Rosemarie ========== From: EArnavoud@aol.com Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 15:20:40 EST Subject: Re: A request from a novice To all those who responded - thanks for the suggestions. I shall follow them up. ========== From: "Phillip Sharp" sharp@markham.edu.pe Subject: RE: A request from a novice Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 08:11:51 -0500 Fault one: Pretentious references to the classics. "These virtues decidedly override all the artistic faults that may be attributed to him." Would someone please elucidate the "artistic faults" generally attributed to Hardy in academia? In my lay opinion Hardy's prose is artistically beautiful and poignant. He is my favorite novelist not only for what he says, but for how he says it. ========== From: "Alan Shelston" alan@shelston.freeserve.co.uk Subject: Re: A request from a novice Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 16:55:46 -0000 The 'artistically faulty' line of criticism begins with Henry James and goes on through TS Eliot (After Strange Gods) to F R Leavis. James's objections were to the 'factitiousness' of 'everything human' (in FFMC), and to the language of Tess; they spring from a view of the novel as a work of art above all else, and relate to objections on the grounds of formal imperfection, improbabilities in the narrative, imposition of plot upon character etc. These became commonplaces of Hardy criticism. Eliot's objections relate to the intrusion of Hardy's 'personality' into the work itself. Both these critics held theories of art that either removed or separated the artist from the art-work. Leavis echoed them, without being specific. There is an element of class superiority in all this, to put it mildly, a superiority which academia saw fit to endorse. But it is interesting that now that academic criticism is freeing itself from a view of the novel dictated by the criteria of C19 realism Hardy is coming back into his own. Lawrence foresaw all this of course - his marvellous essay on Hardy makes the point that he 'breaks the mould' and that in taking on a life of their own his characters 'burst through the conventions'. Lawrence was sympathetic because he too recognised that 'the old stable ego of the character is dead', and that therefore the novel had to redefine itself. He saw hardy as a prime mover in this process of redefinition. (All this from memory, with inaccurate quotation, and very over-simplified, but I was interested in your question.) Alan Shelston, University of Manchester ==========