HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO3008 2/6/03 "NAPOLEONIC WARS FICTION"
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Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 20:23:40 +1100
From: David Cornelius <dcorney@midcoast.com.au>
Subject: Fiction involving the Napoleonic wars
Would anyone in the group know whether there were any other fiction writers of Hardy's period who wrote about the
Napoleonic crisis?
Thank you
David Cornelius
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From: "schweik" <schweik@fredonia.edu>
Subject: Re: Fiction involving the Napoleonic wars
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 13:28:55 GMT
Thackeray's *Vanity Fair* follows the Waterloo campaign.
Bob Schweik
Robert Schweik
schweik@fredonia.edu
schweikr@localnet.com
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From: Charles.Anesi@wellsfargo.com
Subject: RE: Fiction involving the Napoleonic wars
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 08:26:33 -0600
:
e By Napoleonic Crisis do you mean the period 1799-1815, or something more specific such as the English invasion hysteria, or the 100 days? And just English writers, or all writers? Asking the group a related question: Given that the Napoleonic Crisis was to the 19th Century as World War II was to the 20th, both being global in scope, resulting in permanent shifts in the balance of power, and being obsessed over and written about for generations, are there some good critical works comparing and contrasting the literary treatment of the two events? Or is it still too early for that?
Chuck Anesi
Charles.Anesi@wellsfargo.com
612-667-9518
pager 888-278-6532
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From: Jcphardysoc@aol.com
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 11:30:10 EST
Subject: Re: Fiction involving the Napoleonic wars
Dear Forum Readers
Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities was set during the French Revolution, which was of course a prelude to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
However, Tolstoy's War and Peace is probably the most notable work of fiction dealing with the Napoleonic Wars on an epic scale.
Incidentally BBC Television broadcast on 4 February an interesting programme (a 'Meet the Ancestors' special) about Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. This was inspired by the discovery of a mass grave of French soldiers at Vilnius. Hardy would have been fascinated as The Dynasts sensitively evokes the privations suffered by Napoleon's retreating army. Details are probably available on the BBC History website.
With best wishes
John Pentney
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From: Charles.Anesi@wellsfargo.com
Subject: RE: Fiction involving the Napoleonic wars
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 13:59:49 -0600
e I really can't think offhand of many 19th century writers who did NOT write something about the Napoleonic period, though Hardy had an especially well-developed Napoleonic fetish. Vanity Fair, though a most excellent novel, is outside Hardy's period as a writer, taking Desperate Remedies as the start of that career. Ditto for W&P, though barely, and obviously Tolstoy's career overlapped Hardy's. (Why is it that neither won the Nobel Prize? Does this mean that Saul Bellow is a better writer than Leo Tolstoy?) But why stand on technicalities. Certainly W&P is the greatest of the Napoleonic novels. Less celebrated favorites of mine dealing with the period would include some of Joseph Conrad's short stories (in Hardy's period), Captain Frederick Marryat's naval novels (before it), Stendahl's Charterhouse of Parma (before it), and a somewhat neglected novel published a few years after Hardy's death -- Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen. AA is a little dated by heavy-handed Freudian allusions and then-fashionable post-WWI pessimism, but in other respects is a pretty good tale. On the non-fiction side, my favorites from the era are The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor and Clausewitz's post-Napoleonic On War. The Code Napoleon makes really boring reading, but is probably the most significant written (if not literary) work to come out of the period, from a social and political viewpoint. Unrelated question: Is anyone on this mailing list learned in Edward Coke's Third Part of The Institutes of the Laws of England? Or know someone who is, probably at an English university? I have a question about a case citation..
Chuck Anesi
Charles.Anesi@wellsfargo.com
612-667-9518
pager 888-278-6532
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Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 15:36:29 -0500
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: RE: Fiction involving the Napoleonic wars
:
>
> Try Bill Davies, Chuck. He's just brought out a book called *Thomas Hardy
and
> the Law*
WilliamII@aol.com
Good Luck,
Rosemarie
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Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 15:56:12 +1100
From: David Cornelius <dcorney@midcoast.com.au>
Subject: Hardy and Napoleon's invasion plans
Thank you to those who responded to my query. I suppose I should have been
more specific and asked about the invasion hysteria. I know 'Vanity Fair'
deals with the Waterloo period and that the war impinges indirectly in a
number of Austen's writings.
What made me ask the question arose from the nature of hysteria. Some weeks
ago my daughter mentioned that a friend in Brisbane had been told by her
friend about an unusual occurrence. This particular person had found a
wallet in the street. She contacted the owner who turned out to be a
person of middle eastern appearance and returned the wallet. When she
refused a reward he said that he would give her a piece of advice which was
not to attend the Indy car races that were to be held on the Gold Coast,
Queensland. Naturally we were somewhat alarmed and suggested to our
daughter to ring her friend to contact the originator of the story and tell
her to call the police. Some weeks later the 'Sydney Morning Herald'
published a story on similar lines of how hysteria can lead to the
development of 'urban myths'. I am sure that similar stories must be also
current in those countries currently heading stupidly to war (someone
should send Bush and Blair some of Hardy's poems).
Anyway, the story rang a bell in relation to Hardy's 'Tradition (Legend -
urban myth?) of 1804' and I wondered whether any other writer's of Hardy's
time had made use of this hysteria in their fiction.
Thanks again,
David Cornelius
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