This major new reading of the novels of Thomas Hardy, by leading critic George Levine, disentangles the author's often elaborately distanced prose from his beautiful poetic and precise renderings of the natural world. Clear, direct and minimally academic in his own writing, Levine provides an overview of Hardy's entire fictional canon, with extensive discussions of his early and late novels including his last, The Well-Beloved. Levine draws new attention to the way Hardy absorbed both the ideas and the writing strategies of Charles Darwin, and develops new perspectives first articulated in the criticism of great novelists - in particular Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. Levine departs from the critical norm by reading Hardy in the context of his deep feeling for the natural world and all living things, and the implicit affirmation of life that sometimes drives his bleakest narratives.

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This study examines Hardy's prolonged struggle with his contemporary readers, whose bourgeois values he despised. Initially content to compromise, to provide them with congenial entertainment, Hardy resorted at first to strategies of subversion, smuggling material past his editors and finally to outspoken attack. Professor T. R. Wright attempts to balance historical research into the response of 'actual' readers and the material conditions of publishing with literary-critical analysis of the 'implied' reader inscribed in the novels themselves.

The first attempt to produce a Thomas Hardy Dictionary was made in 1911, before many of his finest poems had even been written, and since then there have been many attempts to produce reference works on his works and his life. None, however, can claim the authority and comprehensiveness ofthis Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy. Under the editorial direction of Professor Norman Page, more than 40 of the world's most prominent experts on Hardy have been brought together to combine their insights and understandings of all aspects of Hardy studies. The result is a unique synthesis of knowledge, incorporating different nationalinterests and traditions of scholarship, investigating Hardy's life, work, and influences, and the historical context in which he wrote. As well as the assurance of sound scholarship and the convenience of the companion format, there are unexpected delights for the browser, such as entries on alcohol, humour, and pets. The Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy is an indispensable bible for the Hardy scholar and the Hardy readeralike.

Reevaluates Hardy's representations of minds, the will, and consciousness (and nescience) in the context of Victorian brain science and Victorian medical neurology.

The wide-ranging and lively essays in Reading Thomas Hardy will appeal to anyone interested in Hardy. Specialists and Hardy enthusiasts will find a showcase for the work of many of the world's leading Hardy scholars. Subjects covered include Hardy the writer and Hardy the man, individual texts and wider themes, and Hardy's relationships to other artists. Whether presenting new research, embodying the best of traditional approaches, or challenging the reader with new interpretations, all the papers are authoritative and accessible.

#MeToo and Modernism offers a blend of cultural, historical, literary, and pedagogical responses applied to the themes behind today’s ongoing #MeToo Movement. This volume is organized into four sections: a three-part chronological response in which scholars analyze literary understandings of how ripples of the #MeToo Movement began to emerge in Modernist literature, followed by a pedagogical section on how to incorporate such teachings in university classrooms. Editors Robin E. Field and Jerrica Jordan foreword the collection with an introduction answering the question of why such a volume is necessary in today’s educational landscape. The introduction summarizes the current scholarship regarding #MeToo and Modernism, while also uncovering the omissions, particularly in approaching nonbinary or queer writers, as well as writers of color, that still exist; as a response, many of these essays attempt to approach these gaps. Furthermore, the introduction shows how more traditional Modernist writers--including Woolf, Forster, Wells, and Joyce--served as forerunners of early glimmers of the #MeToo Movement in Modernist Literature.