HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H02006 1/20/02 "HARDY AND JACQUES LACAN QUESTION" ==================================================================== From: "Rob Abbott" hobacus@clara.co.uk Subject: Hardy and Jacques Lacan Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 10:37:26 -0800 I am currently writing an MA dissertation that takes a psychoanalytical approach to Hardy s work, particularly The Well-Beloved and Jude the Obscure. There seems to be surprisingly little published critical material that takes this approach. The MLA bibliography, for example, only lists six articles on Hardy and psychology. I have looked at the Hardy resources on the web page but again there doesn t seem to be much that is directly relevant. I want to use the theories of Jacques Lacan as a means of analysing Hardy s work. Lacan, as most will affirm, is notoriously difficult to understand so any help in finding readable, understandable studies using this approach would be most welcome! Many thanks Rob Abbott My e-mail address is hobacus@clara.co.uk ========== Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 07:54:27 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: Hardy and Jacques Lacan : Dear Rob, Two places where you should find references guiding you to what material is available (not a great deal I'm afraid) are, first, Peter Widdowson's essay "Hardy and Critical Theory" in _The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy, ed. Dale Kramer, 1999 (73-92), and secondly, the article "Critical Approaches" in _The Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy_, ed. Norman Page, 2000. Both give good overviews of Hardy criticism past and current. Best Wishes, Betty Cortus, hardycor@mailhost2.csusm.edu ========== Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 22:39:22 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy and Jacques Lacan I believe you have a fallow field here, Rob. A wonderfully fallow field. In my own case I've not yet been wholeheartedly drawn to theory or theorists. Not because I have disdained the ground -- far be it-- but because, for me, the artists and the poets alone give me more than enough for a lifetime's experience of wonder and exploration and wisdom -- more than enough! Having said that, I have found Lacan's treatise on silence (language and voiding response) to be an exploration in depth of great interest. It started, for me, many years ago (long before I read Lacan - before I tried to read Lacan, I should say) with Socrates' trial on which, in my juvenile years, I once wrote a full legal defense; but it returns to me in Lacan's idea of "empty" speech and "full " speech; it occurs to me, in that context -- or in the Hardyan context-- that so many of his female characters are aware of how this function operates-- even if only in making themselves heard in the void (as Lacan might put it). I believe in *Ecrits* ( but possibly more fully elsewhere?) Lacan explores the idea of the value of *tessera* --I am thinking now of the dialogues in *A Pair of Blue Eyes*. I look forward to seeing where you go with this research, Rob. With every good wish, Rosemarie Morgan ==========