Thomas Hardy And History
by Fred Reid /
2017 / English / PDF
15.2 MB Download
This book addresses the questions 'What did Thomas Hardy think
about history and how did this enter into his writings?' Scholars
have sought answers in 'revolutionary', 'gender', 'postcolonial'
and 'millennial' criticism, but these are found to be
unsatisfactory. Fred Reid is a historian who seeks answers
by setting Hardy more fully in the discourses of
philosophical history and the domestic and international affairs
of Britain. He shows how Hardy worked out, from the late 1850s,
his own 'meliorist' philosophy of history and how it is inscribed
in his fiction. Rooted in the idea of cyclical history as
propounded by the Liberal Anglican historians, it was adapted
after his loss of faith through reading the works of Auguste
Comte, George Drysdale and John Stuart Mill and used to defend
the right of individuals to break with the Victorian sexual code
and make their own 'experiments in living'.
This book addresses the questions 'What did Thomas Hardy think
about history and how did this enter into his writings?' Scholars
have sought answers in 'revolutionary', 'gender', 'postcolonial'
and 'millennial' criticism, but these are found to be
unsatisfactory. Fred Reid is a historian who seeks answers
by setting Hardy more fully in the discourses of
philosophical history and the domestic and international affairs
of Britain. He shows how Hardy worked out, from the late 1850s,
his own 'meliorist' philosophy of history and how it is inscribed
in his fiction. Rooted in the idea of cyclical history as
propounded by the Liberal Anglican historians, it was adapted
after his loss of faith through reading the works of Auguste
Comte, George Drysdale and John Stuart Mill and used to defend
the right of individuals to break with the Victorian sexual code
and make their own 'experiments in living'.