Tess, Nature, and the Voices of Hardy
Abstract
Thomas Hardy might be described as an ‘in-spite-of ’ novelist. That is, he figures in literary criticism and literary history as a great novelist ‘in spite of’ gross defects, the most commonly alleged of which are his manipulation of events in defiance of probability to produce a tragic- ironic pattern, his intrusiveness as authorial commentator, his reliance on stock characters, and his capacity for writing badly. In my view, the last of these alleged faults involves all the others, which, considered in the abstract as narrative strategies, are not necessarily faults. If we have reservations about them in Hardy’s work, it must be because of the way they are articulated—or inadequately articulated.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Thomas Hardy Literature Studies
Poetry Analysis and Criticism
French Literature and Poetry
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Language of Fiction
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Pages
- 174–199
- Publication date
- 2 February 2026
- Language
- EN
- Document type
- Book chapter