HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO3039 5/23/03 "BOOK REVIEW PAGE UPDATE"
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Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 12:26:24 -0400
From: Shannon Rogers <srogers@mailhost.sju.edu>
Subject: The New Book Reviews Page
Hello All,
I have just completed the finishing touches on the New and Improved Book
Reviews
Page, the first phase of our general TTHA website facelift. It is
currently available for
gasps of delight (or disgust) on the Members Research Resources Page. All
comments
are welcome, criticisms nicely worded, please :)
If you are a TTHA member, you can access through:
http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/Members/MRRHome.htm
Now that the real work is finished, I look forward to regular updates to
the reviews themselves.
If I might take this opportunity, if you are an author or publisher with
items for review (books,
articles, film, other media), please feel free to contact me
at: shannon.rogers@sju.edu
And potential reviewers are always welcome.
Cheers!
Shannon
Shannon L. Rogers
General Editor
Book Reviews Page
The Thomas Hardy Association
shannon.rogers@sju.edu
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Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 13:29:54 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: The New Book Reviews Page
What a beautiful job you've done, Shannon! And the backcloth of Beeny Cliff
is just stunning!
To celebrate this event of your achievement-- not just as TTHA's *BOOK
REVIEWS* editor but also as newly-fledged"dweeb" (your skills with html)
-- I'm going to sit down this very minute in my lunch-hour and write a
review of a delightful article on TH that's just come my way from Catherine
Maxwell, called "Vision and Visuality" (*A Companion to Victorian Poetry*,
eds R. Cronin, A. Chapman & A. H. Harrison: Oxford: 2002).
Back again soon -- --and BRAVO!
Cheers,
Rosemarie
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Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 14:20:43 -0400
From: Shannon Rogers <srogers@mailhost.sju.edu>
Subject: New on the REVIEWS Page
Just posted to the REVIEWS Page, in the Members Research Resources section, are the following three
reviews:
A review of the film The Claim, by Philip Allingham
Rosemarie Morgan's review of an essay in A Companion to Victorian Poetry, by Catherine Maxwell. The essay,
"Vision and Visuality", focuses on the visual in Hardy's poetry.
To complement Bob Schweik's previous review of the same title, we have a new review of G. Glen Wickens'
Thomas Hardy, Monism, and the Carnival Tradition: The One and the Many in "The Dynasts" by C. M. Jackson-
Houlston.
The Reviews Page can be accessed through the MRR link on the TTHA front page: <http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/Welcome/welcomet.htm>http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/Welcome/welcomet.htm
If you are a member, but do not have your access number, or if you are interested in becoming a member of TTHA,
please contact Rosemarie Morgan: rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
If you are an author or publisher and would like to submit materials for review, please contact me at: shannon.rogers@sju.edu
Cheers,
Shannon
Shannon L. Rogers General Editor Book Reviews Page The Thomas Hardy Association shannon.rogers@sju.edu
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Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 23:03:40 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: New on the REVIEWS Page
Status:
I've just taken a look at C. M. Jackson-Houlston's review of Wickens, G.
Glen.
Thomas Hardy, Monism, and the Carnival Tradition (February 2003) posted this
week to the REVIEWS Page, in TTHA's Members Research Resources, and would
like
to say what a marvellous scholarly wellspring this is-- to have *two*
first-class reviews of this complex book.
As Bob Schweik, in his excellent review of the same book, and C. M. Houlston,
both remark, *The Dynasts* remains, critically speaking, a much neglected
work,
though I would venture to say that this is not (as neither one of our
reviewers
does actually say) because of its location in an inappropriate genre, as
Wickens claims, but possibly because it has passed through the philosophically
inert strata of late twentieth-century literary criticism and has emerged the
"splendid failure" (Carpenter's unwitting phrase) of a "splendid failure" of
late twentieth-century critical comprehension.
Wickens cites Carpenter, Seymour-Smith and Howe as some of the late
twentieth-century critics in question: if we reflect back on the heyday of
this
grand work and upon those younger poets of Hardy's time who lauded it as the
greatest of his writings the "splendid failure" may be self-explanatory. Who
were those younger poets? Certainly not Carpenter, Seymouth Smith and Howe.
They were Yeats, Robert Bridges, D. H. Lawrence, Charlotte Mew, Lascelles
Abercrombie, Walter de la Mare, Edmund Gosse, G.K Chesterton, Siegfried
Sassoon, among some.
There are peaks and troughs in literary history as in any classicist's
pendulum
swing. Let's hope that studies of Wickens' kind will propel us back to the age
of Yeats and Lawrence that we might recover at least a small part of our
philosophical literary heritage in Hardy. It simply does not do, though,
meantime, for Wickens to undermine Bob Schweik's own effort to stir the inert
strata --- as one "who misses the chance to advance our understanding of the
development of Hardy's thought beyond such usual influences as Darwin, Mill,
Stephen, Schopenhauer, and Hartmann, all considered in the most general way"
(Wickens. 227).
"Such [er...] usual influences...?"
Ahem! --
Well if Wickens --with Bakhtin's help --- succeeds in advancing our
understanding of the development of Hardy's thought "beyond such usual
influences" we will surely nominate him for the most illustrious of
illustrious
literary prizes.
Yea!
But for the Here and Now, Bravo to the "Book Reviews" Page. It's a stunner.
Best,
Rosemarie
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