Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbevilles , livre ebook

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82 pages

English

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This critical and contextual study by a distinguished critic sheds new light on Hardy's famous novel of rural life, sexual desire and tragic irony.

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European

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Publié par	Humanities eBooks
Date de parution	11 janvier 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781847600455
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Literature Insights General Editor: Charles Moseley

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ThOmàS HàrDy: Tess of the d’Urbervilles

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‘‘a text to be fought over’’

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isbn 978-1-84760-045-5

Thomas Hardy: ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’

Cedric Watts

Literature Insights. Tirril: Humanities-Ebooks, 2007

Contents

A note on the author 1. Preliminary Matter 1.1. Editorial Note and Acknowledgements 1.2. Abbreviations 1.3 Foreword 2. Biographical 2.1. Hardy’s Progress 2.2. Personal Aspects ofTess of the d’Urbervilles 3. The Composition ofTess of the d’Urbervillesand its Modes of Publication 3.1. Composition and Early Publication 3.2. Subsequent Versions 4. The Opening, the Plot and the Narration 4.1. The Title, Sub-Title and Epigraph 4.2. A Plot-Summary and Its Limitations 4.3. Rape and Seduction 4.4. Characterisation 4.5. Narration 5. Themes and Contexts 5.1. Religion, Scepticism and Morality 5.2. Politics 6. Literary Aspects 6.1. Naturalism and Realism 6.2. Leitmotifs and Themes 6.3. Optical Effects and Defamiliarisation 6.4. Language 7. Rural Representation 7.1. Talbothays 7.2. Flintcomb-Ash 8. Critical Survey 8.1. Contemporaneous Responses 8.2. Subsequent Responses 9. Conclusion 10. Bibliography

A note on the author

After service in the Royal Navy, Cedric Watts entered Cambridge University and took his BA (Class I, English), MA and PhD there. He has written seventeen critical and scholarly books, including the Penguin Critical Study,Thomas Hardy: ‘Jude the Obscure’, and the Humanities-Ebook,Joseph Conrad: ‘The Secret Agent’. He has edited Hardy’sJude the Obscure(Broadview Press) and thirty-three other volumes. He is currently Research Professor of English at Sussex University. The epigraph, ‘a text to be fought over’, quotes Harvey’s words in Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, ed. Geoffrey Harvey (Cambridge: Icon, 2000), p. 116.

1. Preliminary Matter

1.1. Editorial Note and Acknowledgements

Between its commencement in 1888 and the Macmillan reprint of 1920,Tess of the d’Urbervillesa complex process of evolution. Hardy made numerous underwent changes and revisions, during which the novel’s themes were enriched and subtleties increased. For the present study, I have therefore chosen as copy-text that 1920 reprint of the 1912 Wessex Edition. The scholarly Clarendon edition of the novel (Oxford University Press, 1983) and the related Oxford World’s Classics edition (2005) have been consulted. Both offer a text which is an amalgam of material from different times and locations: variously the incomplete manuscript, the serial printing, and numer-ous revisions found in the book texts as they evolved. In my textual preference, the 1920 Macmillan version, the punctuation is sometimes lighter and sometimes heavier than in the Clarendon. This Macmillan text bore Hardy’s endorsement, displays what readers saw in his lifetime, and possesses clear historical provenance. Unless other-wise indicated, then, that 1920 volume is the source of my quotations fromTess of the d’Urbervilles. For the 1912 edition, Hardy changed the capitalisation of ‘D’Urberville’ to ‘d’Urberville’, so that the title becameTess of the d’Urbervilles. When quoting com-mentators and citing previous editions, I retain their capitalisations; otherwise I follow Hardy’s later preference, ‘d’Urberville’ (and d’Urbervilles). Works which proved very useful during the preparation of this Ebook included J. T. Laird’sThe Shaping of ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’, Michael Millgate’s biographies of Hardy, and, of course,The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy. Works quoted in the text are (with the exception of some periodicals) listed in the Bibliography. In quotations, a row of three points (or of four to include a full stop) indicates an ellipsis already present in the quoted matter, whereas a row enclosed in square brackets indicates an omission that I have made. Square brackets also enclose editorial insertions.

1.2. Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used:

Tess of the d’ Urbervilles 7

J Thomas Hardy:Jude the Obscure, ed. Cedric Watts. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 1999. LThe Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy(7 vols.), ed. Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978–88. LEFLetters of Emma and Florence Hardy, ed. Michael Millgate. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996. LN The Literary Notebooks of Thomas Hardy, ed. Lennart A. Björk. (2 vols.) London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985. LWThomas Hardy: The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, ed. Michael Millgate. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984. ST J. T. Laird:The Shaping of ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’. London: Oxford University Press, 1975. THardy: Thomas Tess of the d’Urbervilles. London: Macmillan, 1912; rpt., 1920. THMillgate: Michael Thomas Hardy: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

1.3 Foreword

Tess of the d’ Urbervilles 8

Tess of the d’Urbervilles is predominantly realistic, but its realism blends with the poetic, the symbolic and the expressionistic; occasionally it is challenged by the mel-odramatic, eldritch and bizarre. Indeed, its diversity of effects includes the benign and the bitter, the lyrical and the documentary, the subtle and the blatant, the voluptuous and the didactic. Its occasional harshness mingles with sensitivity, modes of comedy, and tender compassion. Though it is a late Victorian novel, its elements of descrip-tive frankness and radicalism in ideas anticipate Modernism. Its treatment of sexual desire and moral injustice can still fascinate, trouble, and arouse indignation. Hardy deemed the novel his favourite, and said that he loved Tess best of all his characters. To many readers, she remains a phenomenally vital, seductive and tragic creation, irradiated by Hardy’s dogged ethical integrity and his sensuously romantic sensibility. To others, her characterisation is a variable construct or a revealing product of mascu-line discourses. The work as a whole has remained controversial from its outset as a serial to its present-day establishment as a powerful but problematic literary classic. Nevertheless, A. Alvarez may have spoken for numerous readers when he said: ‘Tess of the d’Urbervillesis an extraordinarily beautiful book, as well as an extraordinarily moving one’. Tess gave birth only to the ill-fated Sorrow, butTesshas proved fecund, generating an opera, plays, îlms, and an international chorus of commentators.