num_pages: 113
description: Widely popular throughout the world, Hardy still seems to speak to us, in fiction and in poetry, as our contemporary. In this new edition of his popular study, Peter Widdowson identifies the elements in his work which enable Hardy to be read in this the focus on unstable class and sexualrelations in a society undergoing rapid change; the highly-charged and contradictory representations of women at the heart of this dangerously 'metamorphic' social process; the self-reflexive artifice of the writing itself as an aspect of Hardy's 'satiric' worldview; his ironic humanism in the 'newDark Age' of the modern world. Drawing on contemporary approaches to literary study in an accessible way, the author shows where this radical and destabilizing Hardy is to be located in the texts; and similarly seeks to recast our conception of Hardy the Poet by showing how preconceived andselective it is. For this edition, Professor Widdowson has updated the Select Bibliography and has also included a 'Postscript'
language: English
title: Thomas Hardy
titlecomplete: Thomas Hardy (Writers and Their Work)
ratings_count: 2
publisher: Liverpool University Press