Book Reviews

Shelley: A Critical Reading (Earl R. Wasserman) (Reviewed by Stuart Curran, University of Wisconsin, Madison)The English Historical Novel: Walter Scott to Virginia Woolf (Avrom Fleishman) (Reviewed by William Darby, Wayne State University)A Companion to William Carlos Williams\u27s \u27Paterson\u27 (Benjamin Sankey) (Reviewed by Jerome Mazzaro, State University of New York at Buffalo)The Metaphor of Chance: Vision and Technique in the Works of Thomas Hardy (Bert G. Hornback) (Reviewed by Peter J. Casagrande, The University of Kansas)A Genteel Endeavor: American Culture and Politics in the Gilded Age (John Tomsich) (Reviewed by Edward E. Chielens, Detroit College of Business)Hermogenes and the Renaissance: Seven Ideas of Style (Annabel M. Patterson) (Reviewed by John F. Fleischauer, Ohio University

Thomas hardy: positivism and his tragic vision

This thesis constitutes an investigation into the presence of the philosophy of August Comte in the writings of Thomas Hardy, and seeks to explore the contrast between Comtean Positivism and Hardy's tragic vision. The interaction of Hardy's art with Comte's Positive philosophy is assessed in each of Hardy's writing genres, especially in light of critics' characterization of Hardy's works as "pessimistic”. Chapter One provides an overview of Auguste Comte, his philosophy and the Religion of Humanity that grew from it. Chapter Two is a preliminary examination of the points of intersection between Hardy and Comte's writings, and of Hardy's involvement with proponents of Positivism and the Religion of Humanity. Chapter Three moves directly into Hardy's works with an initial analysis of the novels, noting specific occurrences of Positivist ideas and terminology within this genre. Several novels in particular provide fertile ground for the investigation of Hardy's attitude towards Positivism, and in Chapter Four Hardy's exposure of the failures of Positivism is investigated in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D’Uv(_^)bervilles and Jude the Obscure. Chapter Five is devoted solely to Hardy's major epic drama. The Dynasts presents a detailed and, for this thesis, significant dramatization of Positivism and tragedy, in the dialogue between the Spirits of the Overworld concerning the "pros" and "cons" of a Positivist worldview. The Dynasts argues a Positivist viewpoint at the expense of artistic cohesion, but allows the reader a glimpse at Hardy's convictions in the passionate power of his tragic verse. Chapter Six concerns the poetic genre of his work. Hardy's lyric poetry spanned his entire literary career; it is the artistic stream that carries and develops his sense of the tragic through his early faith, subsequent loss of faith, the philosophical meanderings of his middle years, and finally the universally tragic statements of his later years. Positivism thus provides a useful vehicle for understanding the proper distinction between Hardy the pessimist and Hardy the tragedian. Ultimately the predominant perception of tragedy in Hardy's work overwhelms the philosophical moorings and optimistic hope engendered by Comte's Positive Philosophy, but the painful, poetic worlds which Hardy creates are richer and deeper through his explorations of Positivism

From <i>Wessex Poems</i> to <i>Time's Laughingstocks</i> : An eco-critical approach to the poetry of Thomas Hardy

The aim of this thesis is to re-evaluate the poetry of Thomas Hardy from an ecocritical perspective, and in so doing, show how and in what ways Hardy's poetic oeuvre represents a revealing response to the environment, and an important and still relevant comment on humankind's relationship to it. As the Introduction explains in more detail, the thesis concentrates on the verse drama and verse collections published between 1898 and 1909. However, Chapter 1 opens with an eco-critical analysis of Hardy's earliest surviving poem, 'Domicilium', written 1857-60; the Chapter develops into a discussion of the origins of eco-criticism as a theoretical approach with a political edge. Chapter 2 discusses the complex Victorian concept of 'Nature', which shaped Hardy's own response to the environment. Chapter 3 engages with Hardy's career as a novel writer, and notes the way in which it informs his later poetry. Chapter 4 extends the eco-critical analysis to Hardy's poetry, focusing on Wessex Poems, his first verse collection. Although short, the collection shows how Hardy was already shaping his own poetic sense of the natural world. This theme is developed in Chapter 5, on Poems of the Past and Present, a collection notable for a series of poems with a bio-centric focus on the natural world in general and bird life in particular. Chapter 6 deals with The Dynasts, a retelling of the Napoleonic Wars through which Hardy dramatized his belief that all life on earth is connected by the workings of the 'Immanent Will'. Chapter 7 discusses Time's Laughingstocks, Hardy's bleakest reading of the human condition. The Conclusion analyses another individual poem, 'The Convergence of the Twain', written following the loss of the Titanic in 1912, and summarises Hardy's distinctive contribution to our emerging sense of what might constitute a meaningful 'eco-poetic'

Thomas Hardy's revisions of the Mayor of Casterbridge

This thesis is a study of Hardy's composition of The Mayor of Casterbridge based on the manuscript and the six published texts of the novel. After a brief history of the novel's composition and publication, and an investigation of the physical structure of the manuscript, the thesis attempts to examine the textual development of The Mayor under the subject categories of plot, characterization, and setting; narrator's voice, imagery, and style, the arrangement of material in each category following a chronological order. The principal intention of this study is to throw light both on the author's conception of his novel and on his methods of composition.<p

Starmount vespers: an oratorio for voices and strings

Starmount Vespers is an oratorio-style composition for SATB choir and string orchestra on the subjects of cyclicity and self-similarity. Cyclical phenomena are widespread in the natural world (day and night, sleeping and waking, seasons, tides, etc.) and occur on many structural levels. Starmount Vespers seeks to exemplify these harmonious relationships in both text and music, drawing influence from other cyclical works (such as Orff's Carmina Burana and Vivaldi's Gloria), the Prouhet-Thue-Morse sequence, and the compositional approaches of Danish composer Per Nørgård. Nørgård's third symphony, in particular, is a mature representation of his melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic self-similar structures and informed much of Starmount Vespers' composition. The texts were selected from the poetry of Thomas Hardy, H.P. Nichols, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and were adapted by the composer to better fit the narrative. The resulting fourteen-minute composition both delivers a textual narrative on self-similarity and, through fractal patterns embedded in the musical parameters, embodies the text

Cheryl Hardy v. The Prudential Insurance Company of America : Brief of Respondent

Appeal from a Judgment of the District Court of Salt Lake County, Honorable Dean E. Conde

The theme of alienation in the major novels of Thomas Hardy

The predicament of human isolation and alienation is a pervasive theme that has not been sufficiently studied in Thomas Hardy's fiction. This study investigates the theme of alienation focussing on Hardy's major novels. Although the term 'alienation' is one of the most outstanding features of this age, it is not very clear what it precisely means. The writer has to draw extensively on Hegel, Marx, Fromm and other thinkers to understand the complex ramifications of the term. The numerous connections in which the term has been used are restricted to include only a few meanings and applications among which the most important refers to a disparity between one's society and one's spiritual interests or welfare. The theme of alienation, then, is investigated in representative texts from the wide trajectory of Victorian literature. It is clear that the central intellectual characteristic of the Victorian age is, as Arnold diagnosed it, "the sense of want of correspondence between the forms of modern Europe and its spirit". The increasing difficulty of reconciling historical and spiritual perspectives has become a major theme for Hardy and other late Victorians. Next, each of Hardy's major novels is given a chapter in which the theme of alienation is traced. In Far from the Madding Crowd, Boldwood's neurotic and self-destructive nature makes him obsessed with Bathsheba, and as a result, murders Troy and suffers the isolation of life imprisonment; Fanny Robin's tragic and lonely death, only assisted by a dog, is a flagrant indictment of society. In The Return of the Native, Clym is the earliest prototype in Hardy's fiction of alienated modern man. He returns to Egdon Heath only to live in isolation unable to communicate with the very people whom he thought of as a cure for his alienation. Eustacia has consistently been leading a life of alienation in Egdon Heath which leads to her suicide. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Henchard's alienation may be more ascribed to his own character, recalling Boldwood, than to incongruity with society. Yet Hardy emphasises the tendency of society towards modernity which Henchard cannot cope with. In The Woodlanders, not only does wild nature fail to be a regenerative and productive force bet also human nature fails to be communicative and assuring. The people of Little Hintock fail to communicate with iry other. The relationship between Marty and Giles is an "obstructed relationship"; Giles dies a sacrificial death, and Marty ends as a wreck in a rare scene hardly credible in a newly emerging world. Fitzpiers and Mrs Charmond, on the other hand, are isolated in the sterile enclosure of their own fantasies. Grace, anticipating Tess and Sue, is torn in a conflict between two worlds, neither of which can happily accommodate her. In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Tess, after her childhood experiences at Marlott and later at Trantridge, soon discovers how oppressive society is,particularly when she is rejected by Angel, whom she loves and through whom she aspires to fulfil herself. Angel suffers from self-division in his character, and the conflict between received attitudes and advanced ideas leaves him an embodiment of an alienated man hardly able to reconcile the values of two worlds. Jude the Obscure is Hardy's most complete expression of alienation. Jude's alienation is explicitly social and implicitly cosmic, and his failure to identify himself in society constitutes a major theme of the novel. The novel foreshadows the modern themes of failure, frustration, futility, disharmony, isolation, rootlessness, and absurdity as inescapable conditions of life. In conclusion, the theme of alienation in the major novels of Thomas Hardy is a pervasive one. Nevertheless, not all his characters are alienated; however their happy condition, like that of the rustics in Gray's Elegy, is seen to stem from their intellectual limitations

Uintah Basin Medical Center v. Leo W. Hardy, M.D. : Brief of Appellant

From an Order of Summary Judgment of the Eighth Judicial District Court for Duchesne County, State of Utah Honorable John R. Anderson, Presidin