Thomas Hardy, Poet

Adrian Grafe is a professor of English at Artois University in France. He was an associate professor at the Sorbonne for 10 years, has published broadly on poetry, and was named a Fellow of the English Association in 2011. Laurence Estanove teaches English at Paris-Descartes University, France. The author of many essays on Hardy’s novels and poems, she is a cofounder of FATHOM (French Association for Thomas Hardy Studies) and coeditor of its online journal.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments

Introduction (Adrian Grafe and Laurence Estanove)

I—Landscape into Memory

“Thinking Like a Mountain”? Hardy’s Poetic Vision of “Environment” (Adrian Tait)

Reclaiming English Bones: Corporeal Commemoration in Hardy’s War Poems (Melanie East)

“Wild Wavering”: Between Pastoral and Elegy (Farhi Öz)

II—Misalignments

Rhyming Events and the Pessimistic Muse (Stephen Tardif)

The End Game: Thomas Hardy’s Looking Glass (Richard D. Beards)

From Pessimism to Idealism: The Pressure of Paradox (Laurence Estanove)

III—Specters of Doubt and Faith

Agnosticism and Freethinking: The Influence of Leslie Stephen (Ilaria Mallozzi)

The Shadow of God in Poems of the Past and the Present (Stéphanie Bernard)

Uncomfortably Numb: “In Tenebris” (Adrian Grafe)

IV—Poetic Craft and Accidentals

Messy Feelings, Tidy Forms: “Poems of 1912–13” (Emily Taylor Merriman)

Challenging Time: Philological and Lexicographical Landscape (Emilie Loriaux)

Hardy’s Crafting of Barnes (Heather Hawkins)

Punctuating Voice and Space (Charles Lock)

Epilogue: The Transcendence of Things Seen (Michael Edwards)

About the Contributors

Index