The Preacher and the Prophet: Biblical Tradition in the Life and Works of Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence
By discussing how biblical heritage affected the life and works of Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence, this article aims at reappraising the writers’ respective literary affiliation to Romanticism and modernism. Indeed, their constant endeavour to formulate alternative worldviews to received Christian...
محفوظ في:
| الحاوية / القاعدة: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom, |
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| المؤلف الرئيسي: | |
| التنسيق: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| اللغة: | Anglais |
| منشور في: |
FATHOM
2026
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| الموضوعات: | |
| الوصول للمادة أونلاين: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| الملخص: | By discussing how biblical heritage affected the life and works of Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence, this article aims at reappraising the writers’ respective literary affiliation to Romanticism and modernism. Indeed, their constant endeavour to formulate alternative worldviews to received Christian traditions thanks to biblical borrowings calls for closer examination. Born in an age when scriptural knowledge was taken for granted, both writers came from backgrounds where reading and discussing the Bible on a daily basis was part of family habits. Lawrence was brought up in the Congregationalist, therefore Nonconformist, tradition, and Hardy, who attended both High and Low Church services, considered for a while becoming a clergyman. Both writers intently questioned their faith, influenced by their reading of works by, among others, Nietzsche and Darwin, Hardy to eventually turn to agnosticism and Lawrence to set out to define a cosmic living force called, for want of a better word, “God”. Despite the writers’ break away from their original creed, their knowledge of the Bible remained deeply rooted and can be traced, both thematically and stylistically, throughout their works that blend the sacred and the profane in ironic ways. Since, the writers’ religious upbringing and subsequent break away from their original creed reveal fruitful commonalities, a focus on intertextual links between a selection of Hardy’s and Lawrence’s works and the Bible will cast light on how biblical imagery, typology and phrasing are appropriated and subverted to serve new epistemological ends. |
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