Haunted Hardy
Subtitle: Poetry, History, Memory
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: January 13, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780333597910
Subjects: Novels, other prose & writers: 19th century; Poetry & poets: 19th century; Literary Criticism; Poetry; English; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Hardy, Thomas; Literary Criticism & Collections / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / Poetry; Poetry-English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary; 1840-1928; 20th century; Autobiographical memory in literature; England; Hardy, Thomas,; History; History in literature; Literature and history; Poetic works
Description: "Hardy was a ghost-ridden author. He described himself as a 'ghost-seer', and in his poetry he constantly writes about the spirits of the dead, whether people known to him, imagined ghosts, or the more abstract spirits who might appear before the bar of history for judgement.

This study argues that the idea of haunting is central to his work: in his conception of his 'second' career as a poet; in the phantom of the lost child which permeates his writings (and reproduces itself in the accusation that he fathered a bastard child with his cousin); in his elegaic writings and intertextual references; and with the way he thinks about history, language and consciousness.

Using the work of Derrida, Abraham and Torok, Walter Benjamin and other theorists, and referring to Victorian debates on materialism and historiography, Tim Armstrong investigates ghostliness, historicity, the event and the status of memory in Hardy's poems."--BOOK JACKET.