Far from the Madding Crowd and the Anxiety of Place
Far from the Madding Crowd marks the dawning of Hardy’s literary career. It is also the first of Hardy’s works to introduce “Wessex”, a place name referring to “the horizons and landscapes of a merely realistic dream-country” (preface, 1895). For Hardy, the urge to find a name that encompasses the w...
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| Xuất bản năm: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom, |
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| Tác giả chính: | |
| Định dạng: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Ngôn ngữ: | Anglais |
| Được phát hành: |
FATHOM
2016
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| Những chủ đề: | |
| Truy cập trực tuyến: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Tóm tắt: | Far from the Madding Crowd marks the dawning of Hardy’s literary career. It is also the first of Hardy’s works to introduce “Wessex”, a place name referring to “the horizons and landscapes of a merely realistic dream-country” (preface, 1895). For Hardy, the urge to find a name that encompasses the whole territory covered by his stories has to do with the need for “a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene” (preface). And as the texts gain a soil to take root in, Hardy gains a name as an acclaimed writer and a place to belong to. To the outcast who turned his back on a long family line of rural workers and the trespasser who overstepped class barriers to be admitted into a middle-class that oftentimes only grudgingly tolerated him, such a dream place may have represented the only free space where the self-created author could escape the contingencies of his reality. It is both imaginary, as the backdrop of the stories (although based on reality) and mental, as there only could Hardy repeatedly shape the raw material of his childhood memories and adult re-creations into literary form. Far from the Madding Crowd appropriately evinces an anxiety of place, as it also tells about characters struggling to find a place of their own, sometimes achieving their quest, sometimes failing to do so and receding into death. The text reaches its final word with a return to an order of things and place that probably raised a few eyebrows among “right-minded” reviewers, critics and readers (Hardy’s expression). |
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