Abstract
Hardy was still smarting from the general execration of Jude the Obscure when he wrote a ‘Postscript’ to his original Preface, for the novel’s 1912 edition. His apologia explained that the marriage theme had ‘seemed a good foundation for the fable of a tragedy’ and that he was ‘not without a hope that certain cathartic, Aristotelian qualities might be found therein’. His gentle boast may be seen not only as a defiance of the reviewers but also as a pleased acceptance of those admirers who were beginning to hail him as a great tragic novelist.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Quotations from his poems are taken from The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy, ed. James Gibson (London: Macmillan, 1976).
William Van O’Connor, Climates of Tragedy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943) p. 3.
See also J. W. Krutch, ‘The Tragic Fallacy’, in The Modern Temper (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1929) pp. 115–43.
Murray Krieger argues that in an age which comes after thinkers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche there is room only for a ‘formless’ tragedy, which can best be accommodated in the novel: The Tragic Vision: Variations on a Theme in Literary Interpretation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
quoted from Harold Orel (ed.), Thomas Hardy’s Personal Writings (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1966; London: Macmillan, 1967) pp. 170–1
Dale Kramer, Thomas Hardy: The Forms of Tragedy (London: Macmillan Press, 1975) p. 35.
In Thomas Hardy, The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, ed. Michael Millgate (London: Macmillan, 1984) p. 265.
F. Kiefer, Fortune and Elizabethan Tragedy (San Marino, CA: Huntingdon, 1983)
H. R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927).
Maurice Willson Disher, Blood and Thunder: Mid-Victorian Melodrama and its Origins (London: Muller, 1949) pp. 12–13.
R. J. White, Thomas Hardy and History (London: Macmillan, 1974) p. 19.
C. Leech, Tragedy (London: Methuen, 1969) p. 84
Editor information
Copyright information
© 1998 Raymond Chapman
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chapman, R. (1998). ‘The Worthy Encompassed by the Inevitable’: Hardy and a New Perception of Tragedy. In: Pettit, C.P.C. (eds) Reading Thomas Hardy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26657-9_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26657-9_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-26659-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-26657-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)