This book examines the transition from traditional to modern elegy through a close study of Thomas Hardy’s oeuvre and its commitment to mourning and remembrance. Hardy is usually read as an avowed elegist who writes against the collective forgetfulness typical of the late-Victorian era. But Hardy, as argued here, is dialectically implicated in the very cultural and psychological amnesia that he resists, as her book demonstrates by expanding the corpus of study beyond the spousal elegies (the “Poems of 1912-1913”) to include a wide variety of poems, novels and short stories that deal with bereavement and mourning. Locating the modern aspect of Hardy’s elegiac writing in this ambivalence and in the subversion of memory as unreliable, the book explores the textual moments at which Hardy challenges binary dichotomies such as forgetting vs. remembering, narcissism vs. unselfish commitment, grief vs. betrayal, the work of mourning vs. melancholia, presence vs. absence. The book's analysis allows us to relate Hardy’s elegiac poetics, and particularly his description of the mourner as a writer, to shifting late-Victorian conceptualizations of death, memory, art, science and gender relations.

Woman Much Missed is the first book-length study of the many poems (over 150) that Thomas Hardy composed in the wake of the death of his first wife Emma in November of 1912. Mark Ford uses these poems to develop a narrative of their four-year courtship on the remote and romantic coast of Cornwall where they met, and then follows Thomas's poetic recreation of the slow degeneration of their marriage and their embittered final decade. Ford shows how Emma's writings and experiences during this time were fundamental to Thomas's evolution into both a best-selling novelist and into one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Although for over a decade the marriage between Thomas and Emma had been troubled, and indeed Emma spent much time during her final years secluded in her attic rooms above his study, her death stimulated him to write some of the greatest elegies in English. Twenty-one of these, including masterpieces such as 'The Voice' (which opens 'Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me') and 'After a Journey' were collected in 'Poems of 1912-13'. While these have received much attention and are often read by school pupils and university students alike, his numerous other poems about Emma have only rarely been discussed. Ford corrects this oversight, providing accessible and insightful readings from a poet's perspective.

Thomas Hardy : The Poet Is, Undoubtedly, An Original Critical Work Which Throws Ample Light On Hardy, A Poetic Genius, So Far Neglected. From Several Perspectives Dr. Patil Analyses And Interprets Hardy'S Poetic Ouvre In An Altogether New Critical Idiom. Hardy, As The Author Argues, Is More Of A Poet Than Of A Novelist. In Fact, He Began His Literary Career As A Poet And Ended It In Becoming A Poet Of High Order. Only For The Sake Of Livelihood, He Had To Write Novels In The Middle Phase. Throughout His Life, He Was Extremely In Love With Poetry.Historically Speaking, Hardy Is Aptly Considered To Be 'A Transition Poet' As He Is The Last Victorian And The First Modern. Like G.M. Hopkins, He Made Several Experiments In Writing Poetry And Firmly Established The Modern Trend. These Things About The Poet Are Not At All Taken Seriously By Many Of His Critics; But, There Are Some Like George Saintsbury, Donald Davie, Philip Larkin And James G. Southworth Who Constantly Urge That Good Hardy Critics Are Wanted.The Present Book Explores, In-Depth, The Truth And Beauty Of Hardy'S Poetry. What The Earlier Critics Have Missed Is, Here, Pain¬Stakingly Unearthed I.E., Hardy'S Views On Love, Nature, Society, Religion, God And Universe. His Evolutionary Meliorism And Scientific Humanism Are Discussed At Length. His Robust Optimism And Melancholic Demeanour Are Also Pointed At, With A Greater Clarity And Confidence. All Those Who Want To Understand Modern Poetry Must Begin By Reading This Truly Remarkable Book. Dr. Mallikarjun Patil Was Born In 1967 In A Village In Belgaum District In Karnataka. He Graduated From Karnatak Arts College, Dharwar, And Obtained His M. A. Degree From Karnatak University. He Also Did His Ph.D., On The Existential Philosophy In Thomas Hardy'S Poetry In 1995.At Present, He Is A Lecturer In The Department Of Studies In English, In Gulbarga University, Gulbarga. He Is A Genuine Scholar And A Writer. He Writes Critical Articles And Poems. His Radio-Talks Are Regularly On Broadcast From Air, Gulbarga. His Research Articles Are Published In Encyclopaedias And Journals. His Another Critical Work Hardy'S Poetry And Existentialism Is In Press. His Sole Ambition In Life Is To Become A Full-Fledged Writer In English.

The articles in this number of Romantik include new research on reverie and dream as the locus of metaphor in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound; an enquiry into the Royal Swedish Society for the Publication of Manuscripts Relating to Scandinavian History and the role it played in the construction of national memory and heritage; a discussion of Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg's and John Martin's iconographies of the sublime in the intersection between art and popular visual spectacle; archival discoveries related to the publication of medieval romance in early nineteenth-century Britain; and a reassessment of The Prelude as a formation narrative, arguing that William Wordsworth displays a conflicted attitude to the growth and progress usually found in the Bildungsroman. The journal also contains reviews of new books on the romantic period published in the Nordic countries.

This book explores some of the ways in which an understanding of poetry, and the poetic impulse, can be fruitfully informed by psychoanalytic ideas. It could be argued that there is a particular affinity between poetry and psychoanalysis, in that both pay close attention to the precise meanings of linguistic expression, and both, though in different ways, are centrally concerned with unconscious processes. The contributors to this volume, nearly all of them clinicians with a strong interest in literature, explore this connection in a variety of ways, focusing on the work of particular poets, from the prophet Ezekiel to Seamus Heaney.Part of the Tavistock Clinic Series.

Shows how reading modernist literature gives us fresh insights into tensions within the empathetic imagination and empathy itself.