“Dr Rıza Öztürk’s new book, The Origin of Hardy’s Tragic Vision, is a lucid explanation of the most important aspect of novelist Thomas Hardy’s worldview – the destruction of self. Dr Öztürk gets to the core of Hardy’s ‘tragic vision’ – evident in the novelist’s interpretation of the dramatic interplay between character and circumstance. To what degree either element of character or circumstance weighs in the tragic equation is the subject of discourse in Öztürk’s book, a significant acquisition for students and scholars of Hardy, Victorian literature and culture, or the history of the English novel. This study of Hardy tackles the novelist’s formulation of tragedy as an individual’s ‘natural aim or desire’ – and attempts to answer the important question concerning who or what is responsible for such appetite. The Origin of Hardy’s Tragic Vision can serve as a handbook in the study of tragedy, from the ancient Greek notions to manifestations in late nineteenth century novelists (with reference to modern novelists and dramatists, such as D. H. Lawrence and Henrik Ibsen). Öztürk’s analysis, from the impulse of character in The Mayor of Casterbridge, through the envelope of circumstance in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, culminates comprehensively in his discussion of the depletion of life in Jude the Obscure. As a novelist familiar with the ideas of Schopenhauer and Darwin, Hardy’s tragic vision encompasses a brutally stark statement about the reality of life itself, and this assessment is captured brilliantly in Rıza Öztürk’s important book. Regarding tragedy from the technical elements to the thematic, to its special attention in terms of feminism and illustrations of the absurd in Jude the Obscure, there is no question that The Origin of Hardy’s Tragic Vision fills the need for newer interpretations of a vital figure in English literature who straddles both the Victorian and modern eras.” – Gregory F. Tague, PhD, Professor of English, St. Francis College, New York; author of Character and Consciousness (2005) and Ethos and Behavior (2008); editor of the ASEBL Journal

Dr. Riza Öztürk's new book, The Origin of Hardy's Tragic Vision, is a lucid explanation of the most important aspect of novelist Thomas Hardy's worldview - the destruction of self. Dr. Öztürk gets to the core of Hardy's three tragic novels and led us to the conclusion that Hardy did indeed manage to contribute to the development of the modern tragic novels.

Thomas Hardy and the Folk Horror Tradition takes the uncanny and unsettling fiction of Thomas Hardy as fundamental in examining the lineage of 'Hardyan Folk Horror'. Hardy's novels and his short fiction often delve into a world of folklore and what was, for Hardy the recent past. Hardy's Wessex plays out tensions between the rational and irrational, the pagan and the Christian, the past and the 'enlightened' future. Examining these tensions in Hardy's life and his work provides a foundation for exploring the themes that develop in the latter half of the 20th century and again in the 21st century into a definable genre, folk horror. This study analyses the subduing function of heritage drama via analysis of adaptations of Hardy's work to this financially lucrative film market. This is a market in which the inclusion of the weird and the eerie does not fit with the construction of a past and its function in creating a nostalgia of a safe and idyllic picture of England's rural past. However, there are some lesser-known adaptations from the 1970s that sit alongside the unholy trinity of folk horror: the adaptation for television of the Wessex Tales. From a consideration of the epistemological fissure that characterize Hardy's world, the book draws parallels between then and now and the manifestation of writing on conceptual borders. Through this comparative analysis, Thomas Hardy and the Folk Horror Tradition posits that we currently exist on a moment of fracture, when tradition sits as a seductive threat.

There has long been a tendency to regard Thomas Hardy as a great tragic writer and to ignore or underestimate the value of his comic works. This derives no doubt partly from the fact that comedy as an art form has been consistently undervalued ever since Aristotle dealt with it so slightly and so slightingly. It also stems from the evident inability of some readers and critics to allow an artist a wide scope and multiple voices. Thomas Hardy and the Comic Muse discusses the nature of comedy and the various theories that purport to explain or define it, and examines Hardy’s works — novels, short stories, and poetry — in terms of the categories of farce, humour, satire, and wit. It looks at where and why Hardy made use of these forms of comedy, what his historical sources were, and why this side of his work has been so frequently neglected. It also looks at what insights might be offered by Hardy — both directly and indirectly — to answer the difficult but always tantalizing question: what is comedy? The two subjects, Hardy and Comedy, are counterpointed throughout so that they prove to be mutually illuminating.

Women's Literary Portraits in the Victorian and Neo-Victorian Novel is a dialogical and intertextual journey through the pages of nineteenth-century novels and their modern, revisionary counterparts. It is the book not only dedicated to the readers associated with academia, but also to all literature enthusiasts, students of literature, and those readers who are fascinated by the Victorian novel, as well as by its current neo-Victorian revival. The focus of this work revolves around the literary portrayals of Victorian and neo-Victorian women who, as the authoress believes, are located in the centre of socio-cultural and historical narratives shaping both the past and the present. Nineteenth-century narratives concerning women's placement and status in the Victorian social landscape are currently revived on the pages of neo-Victorian novels, thus attesting to the unceasing interest in the bygone. While neo-Victorian revisionary fiction endows nineteenth-century women with a redemptive potential, it also exposes modern paradoxes and ambiguities connected with universal expectations towards women, what further approximates our contemporaneity to the Victorian past. While examining these socio-cultural ambivalences, the authoress celebrates Victorian and neo-Victorian women characters in their attempts to thrive as individuals. Consequently, the book studies Victorian and neo-Victorian women characters in relation to their identities, unique voices and textual garments.

In The Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Hardy, some of the most prominent Hardy specialists working today offer an overview of Hardy scholarship and suggest new directions in Hardy studies. The contributors cover virtually every area relevant to Hardy's fiction and poetry, including philosophy, palaeontology, biography, science, film, popular culture, beliefs, gender, music, masculinity, tragedy, topography, psychology, metaphysics, illustration, bibliographical studies and contemporary response. While several collections have surveyed the Hardy landscape, no previous volume has been composed especially for scholars and advanced graduate students. This companion is specially designed to aid original research on Hardy and serve as the critical basis for Hardy studies in the new millennium. Among the features are a comprehensive bibliography that includes not only works in English but, in acknowledgment of Hardy's explosion in popularity around the world, also works in languages other than English.