Overview
Offers a valuable framework for discussion of Thomas Hardy's previously overlooked representations of grief and mourning in his poetry and prose
Discusses Hardy's unique position as a Victorian novelist and modern poet, and as a bridge between these two periods
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
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.
Reviews
“Benziman makes a valuable contribution, not just to Hardy scholarship, but also to debates concerning death and mourning in Victorian literature more widely. In her exploration of Hardy’s rich literary canvas, from stories of returning dead lovers to poetic portraits of grief-stricken pet owners, there is also much to interest the more general Hardy enthusiast.” (Stephanie Meek, BAVS Newsletter, Vol. 19 (1), July, 2019)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Galia Benziman is Senior Lecturer in English at the Open University of Israel and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on British literature of the long nineteenth century; in particular, on Dickens, Hardy, the history of childhood, and the Elegy. Her first book, Narratives of Child Neglect in Romantic and Victorian Culture, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Thomas Hardy’s Elegiac Prose and Poetry
Book Subtitle: Codes of Bereavement
Authors: Galia Benziman
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50713-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-50712-9Published: 10 April 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-50713-6Published: 28 March 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VII, 173
Topics: Poetry and Poetics