Misplaced Pages

#689310

168-607: Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot , he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism , including the poetry of William Wordsworth . He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain such as those from his native South West England . While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as

336-632: A Journey", "The Voice" and others from this collection "are by general consent regarded as the peak of his poetic achievement". In a 2007 biography on Hardy, Claire Tomalin argues that Hardy became a truly great English poet after the death of his first wife Emma, beginning with these elegies, which she describes as among "the finest and strangest celebrations of the dead in English poetry." Many of Hardy's poems deal with themes of disappointment in love and life, and "the perversity of fate", presenting these themes with "a carefully controlled elegiac feeling". Irony

504-479: A State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that

672-543: A Victorian realist, Hardy examines the social constraints on the lives of those living in Victorian England , and criticises those beliefs, especially those relating to marriage, education and religion, that limited people's lives and caused unhappiness. Such unhappiness, and the suffering it brings, is seen by poet Philip Larkin as central in Hardy's works: What is the intensely maturing experience of which Hardy's modern man

840-528: A close friend of Hardy's for the rest of his life, and introduced him to new scientific findings that cast doubt on literal interpretations of the Bible, such as those of Gideon Mantell . Moule gave Hardy a copy of Mantell's book The Wonders of Geology (1848) in 1858, and Adelene Buckland has suggested that there are "compelling similarities" between the "cliffhanger" section from A Pair of Blue Eyes and Mantell's geological descriptions. It has also been suggested that

1008-440: A consensus. Once, when asked in correspondence by a clergyman, Dr. A. B. Grosart , about the question of reconciling the horrors of human and animal life with "the absolute goodness and non-limitation of God", Hardy replied, Mr. Hardy regrets that he is unable to offer any hypothesis which would reconcile the existence of such evils as Dr. Grosart describes with the idea of omnipotent goodness. Perhaps Dr. Grosart might be helped to

1176-581: A deeply personal contract. Mill believes that government run education is an evil because it would destroy diversity of opinion for all people to be taught the curriculum developed by a few. The less evil version of state run schooling, according to Mill, is that which competes against other privately run schools. In contrast, Mill believes that governments ought to require and fund private education. He states that they should enforce mandatory education through minor fines and annual standardised testing that tested only uncontroversial fact. He goes on to emphasise

1344-740: A drug addict who drifts in and out of her life. A sub-set of realism emerged in Australia's literary scene known as "dirty realism", typically written by "new, young authors" who examined "gritty, dirty, real existences", of lower-income young people, whose lives revolve around a nihilistic pursuit of casual sex , recreational drug use and alcohol , which are used to escape boredom . Examples of dirty-realism include Andrew McGahan 's Praise (1992), Christos Tsiolkas 's Loaded (1995), Justine Ettler 's The River Ophelia (1995) and Brendan Cowell 's How It Feels (2010), although many of these, including their predecessor Monkey Grip , are now labelled with

1512-499: A focus on everyday (middle-class) drama, ordinary speech, and dull settings. Realism and naturalism diverge chiefly on the degree of choice that characters have: while naturalism believes in the overall strength of external forces over internal decisions, realism asserts the power of the individual to choose (see A Doll's House ). Russia's first professional playwright, Aleksey Pisemsky , along with novelists Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy ( The Power of Darkness (1886)), began

1680-597: A genre coined in 1995 as " grunge lit ". Ian Watt in The Rise of the Novel (1957) saw the novel as originating in the early 18th-century and he argued that the novel's 'novelty' was its 'formal realism': the idea 'that the novel is a full and authentic report of human experience'. His examples are novelists Daniel Defoe , Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding . Watt argued that the novel's concern with realistically described relations between ordinary individuals, ran parallel to

1848-510: A large audience. Later in the 19th century George Eliot 's (1819–1880) Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1871–72), described by novelists Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language, is a work of realism. Through the voices and opinions of different characters the reader becomes aware of important issues of the day, including the Reform Bill of 1832,

SECTION 10

#1732844608690

2016-407: A large portion of the chapter discussing implications of and objections to the policy of never suppressing opinions. In doing so, Mill explains his opinion of Christian ethics, arguing that, while they are praiseworthy, they are incomplete on their own. Therefore, Mill concludes that suppression of opinion based on belief in infallible doctrine is dangerous. Among the other objections Mill answers

2184-576: A local amateur group, at the time known as the Dorchester Dramatic and Debating Society, but that would become the Hardy Players . His reservations about adaptations of his novels meant he was initially at some pains to disguise his involvement in the play. However, the international success of the play, The Trumpet Major , led to a long and successful collaboration between Hardy and the Players over

2352-648: A man who, ironically, falls from materialistic fortune by his own mistakes. One of the earliest examples of realism was Josiah Gilbert Holland’s second novel, Miss Gilbert’s Career, published “a full decade before any of the so-called pioneer American realistic novelists begin to publish.“ The 1860 novel “anticipated these much abler and more penetrating realists.“ This includes Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), better known by his pen name of Mark Twain , author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Stephen Crane (1871–1900). Twain's style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers

2520-460: A mental breakdown and eventually meeting and subsequently marrying Harriet, Mill changed many of his beliefs on moral life and women's rights. Mill states that On Liberty "was more directly and literally our joint production than anything else which bears my name." The final draft was nearly complete when his wife died suddenly in 1858. Mill suggests that he made no alterations to the text at this point and that one of his first acts after her death

2688-563: A new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm. For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Crane was primarily a journalist who also wrote fiction, essays, poetry, and plays. Crane saw life at its rawest, in slums and on battlefields. His haunting Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage ,

2856-603: A novel structured around contrasts, the main opposition is between Swithin St Cleeve and Lady Viviette Constantine, who are presented as binary figures in a series of ways: aristocratic and lower class, youthful and mature, single and married, fair and dark, religious and agnostic...she [Lady Viviette Constantine] is also deeply conventional, absurdly wishing to conceal their marriage until Swithin has achieved social status through his scientific work, which gives rise to uncontrolled ironies and tragic-comic misunderstandings. Fate or chance

3024-442: A person intends to terminate their ability to have interests it is permissible for society to step in. In other words, a person does not have the freedom to surrender their freedom. To the question of divorce, Mill argues that marriages are one of the most important structures within society; however, if a couple mutually agrees to terminate their marriage, they are permitted to do so because society has no grounds to intervene in such

3192-422: A person may try to prevent harm. He first admits that a person should not wait for injury to happen, but ought try to prevent it. Second, he states that agents must consider whether that which can cause injury can cause injury exclusively. He gives the example of selling poison. Poison can cause harm. However, he points out that poison can also be used for good. Therefore, selling poison is permissible. Yet, due to

3360-574: A person may, without fear of just punishment, do harm to himself through vice. Governments, he claims, should only punish a person for neglecting to fulfill a duty to others (or causing harm to others), not the vice that brought about the neglect. J. S. Mill spends the rest of the chapter responding to objections to his maxim. He notes the objection that he contradicts himself in granting societal interference with youth because they are irrational but denying societal interference with certain adults though they act irrationally. Mill first responds by restating

3528-460: A person should be left as free to pursue his own interests as long as this does not harm the interests of others. In such a situation, "society has jurisdiction over [the person's conduct]." He rejects the idea that this liberty is simply for the purpose of allowing selfish indifference. Rather, he argues that this liberal system will bring people to the good more effectively than physical or emotional coercion. This principle leads him to conclude that

SECTION 20

#1732844608690

3696-560: A person's liberty may be restricted: That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.... Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign. Mill clarifies that this standard is solely based on utility , not on natural rights . According to Mill, children and "barbarian" nations are benefited by limited freedom. Just despots, such as Charlemagne and Akbar

3864-769: A poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians ) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound , W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin . Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in

4032-440: A portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in

4200-403: A prerequisite to the higher pleasures—the summum bonum of utilitarianism. Furthermore, Mill asserted that democratic ideals may result in the tyranny of the majority . Among the standards proposed are Mill's three basic liberties of individuals, his three legitimate objections to government intervention, and his two maxims regarding the relationship of the individual to society. On Liberty

4368-425: A principle of which we should resent as a gross injustice the application to ourselves." In saying this, he references an earlier claim that morals and religion cannot be treated in the same light as mathematics because morals and religion are vastly more complex. Just as with living in a society which contains immoral people, Mill points out that agents who find another's conduct depraved do not have to socialise with

4536-421: A provisional view of the universe by the recently published Life of Darwin and the works of Herbert Spencer and other agnostics. Hardy frequently conceived of, and wrote about, supernatural forces, particularly those that control the universe through indifference or caprice, a force he called The Immanent Will. He also showed in his writing some degree of fascination with ghosts and spirits. Even so, he retained

4704-494: A result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for focusing too much on human vice and misery. Verismo (from Italian vero , meaning 'true, real') was an Italian literary movement which aimed to describe reality. Its main representatives were Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana , regarded as the authors of a " manifesto " of the genre. Among other exponents were Matilde Serao and 1926 Nobel Prize winner Grazia Deledda (see main article for more). Protagonists of

4872-853: A scientist discovered a comet about to kill the planet in a matter of weeks, it may cause more happiness to suppress the truth than to allow society to discover the impending danger. While David Brink concedes that Mill's apparently categorical appeal to rights seems to contradict utilitarianism, he points out that Mill does not believe rights are truly categorical because Mill opposes unrestrained liberty (e.g. offensive public exposure). Furthermore, David Brink tries to reconcile Mill's system of rights with utilitarianism in three ways: Some thinkers have criticised Mill's writing for its apparent narrow or unclear focus in several areas. Mill makes clear that he only considers adults in his writing, failing to account for how irrational members of society, such as children, ought to be treated. Yet Mill's theory relies upon

5040-442: A sense, Émile Zola , whose naturalism is often regarded as an offshoot of realism. Theatrical realism was a general movement in 19th-century theatre from the time period of 1870–1960 that developed a set of dramatic and theatrical conventions with the aim of bringing a greater fidelity of real life to texts and performances. Part of a broader artistic movement , it shared many stylistic choices with naturalism , including

5208-509: A strong emotional attachment to the Christian liturgy and church rituals, particularly as manifested in rural communities, that had been such a formative influence in his early years, and Biblical references can be found woven throughout many of Hardy's novels. Hardy's friends during his apprenticeship to John Hicks included Horace Moule (one of the eight sons of Henry Moule ) and the poet William Barnes , both ministers of religion. Moule remained

Thomas Hardy - Misplaced Pages Continue

5376-413: A style of social realism . Its protagonists usually could be described as angry young men, and it often depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs , to explore social issues and political controversies. The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in

5544-408: A three-volume epic closet drama The Dynasts (1904–08), and though in some ways a very traditional poet, because he was influenced by folksong and ballads, he "was never conventional," and "persistently experiment[ed] with different, often invented, stanza forms and metres," and made use of "rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction". Hardy wrote a number of significant war poems that relate to both

5712-620: A tradition of psychological realism in Russia which culminated with the establishment of the Moscow Art Theatre by Constantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko . Their ground-breaking productions of the plays of Anton Chekhov in turn influenced Maxim Gorky and Mikhail Bulgakov . Stanislavski went on to develop his 'system' , a form of actor training that is particularly suited to psychological realism. 19th-century realism

5880-675: A watercolour of the Tudor gatehouse while visiting his father, who was repairing the masonry of the dovecote. He moved to London in 1862 where he enrolled as a student at King's College London . He won prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Association . He joined Arthur Blomfield 's practice as assistant architect in April 1862 and worked with Blomfield on Christ Church, East Sheen Richmond, London where

6048-471: A year. In 1885 Thomas and his wife moved into Max Gate in Dorchester , a house designed by Hardy and built by his brother. Although they became estranged, Emma's death in 1912 had a traumatic effect on him and Hardy made a trip to Cornwall after her death to revisit places linked with their courtship; his Poems 1912–13 reflect upon her death. In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Emily Dugdale , who

6216-450: A young man, who soon deserts her. When her self-righteous mother rejects her, Maggie becomes a prostitute to survive but soon dies. Crane's earthy subject matter and his objective, scientific style, devoid of moralizing, earmark Maggie as a naturalist work. Other later American realists are John Steinbeck , Frank Norris , Theodore Dreiser , Upton Sinclair , Jack London , Edith Wharton and Henry James . Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850)

6384-469: Is Esther Waters (1894), was also influenced by the naturalism of Zola. William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was the first American author to bring a realist aesthetic to the literature of the United States. His stories of middle and upper class life set in the 1880s and 1890s are highly regarded among scholars of American fiction. His most popular novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), depicts

6552-434: Is a writing style or sub-genre of realistic fiction centered around historical events and time periods. In historical realism, the structure and context of a text is usually solely derived from a real historical event or time period. As a consequence of this, many texts that fall under this category are philosophical by nature. In the early nineteenth century, there was growing impetus to establish an Australian culture that

6720-607: Is an important element in a number of Hardy's poems, including "The Man He Killed" and "Are You Digging on My Grave". A few of Hardy's poems, such as " The Blinded Bird ", a melancholy polemic against the sport of vinkenzetting , reflect his firm stance against animal cruelty, exhibited in his antivivisectionist views and his membership in the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals . Although his poems were initially not as well received as his novels had been, Hardy

6888-428: Is another important theme. Hardy's characters often encounter crossroads on a journey, a junction that offers alternative physical destinations but which is also symbolic of a point of opportunity and transition, further suggesting that fate is at work. Far from the Madding Crowd is an example of a novel in which chance has a major role: "Had Bathsheba not sent the valentine, had Fanny not missed her wedding, for example,

Thomas Hardy - Misplaced Pages Continue

7056-508: Is apparent in the fantastic The Temptation of Saint Anthony (final version published 1874) and the baroque and exotic scenes of ancient Carthage in Salammbô (1862). In German literature , 19th-century realism developed under the name of "Poetic Realism" or "Bourgeois Realism," and major figures include Theodor Fontane , Gustav Freytag , Gottfried Keller , Wilhelm Raabe , Adalbert Stifter , and Theodor Storm . In Italian literature ,

7224-503: Is central to the principles in On Liberty . Nigel Warburton says that Mill appears unclear about what constitutes harm. Early in the book, he claims that simply being offensive does not constitute harm. Later, he writes that certain acts which are permissible and harmless in private are worthy of being prohibited in public. This seems to contradict his earlier claim that merely offensive acts do not warrant prohibition because, presumably,

7392-639: Is closely connected to the development of modern drama, which, as Martin Harrison explains, "is usually said to have begun in the early 1870s" with the "middle-period" work of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen . Ibsen's realistic drama in prose has been "enormously influential." In opera , verismo refers to a post-Romantic Italian tradition that sought to incorporate the naturalism of Émile Zola and Henrik Ibsen. It included realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of contemporary everyday life, especially

7560-471: Is considered mere reportage , not art, and based on naïve metaphysics . On Liberty On Liberty is an essay published in 1859 by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill . It applied Mill's ethical system of utilitarianism to society and state. Mill suggested standards for the relationship between authority and liberty . He emphasized the importance of individuality , which he considered

7728-399: Is impermissible because prohibiting personal actions is impermissible and "[e]very increase of cost is a prohibition, to those whose means do not come up to the augmented price." However, because a government must tax to some extent in order to survive, it may choose to take its taxes from what it deems most dangerous. Mill expands upon his principle of punishing the consequences rather than

7896-424: Is justification for certain religious prohibitions in a society dominated by that religion, he argues that members of the majority ought make rules that they would accept should they have been the minority. He states, "unless we are willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and say that we may persecute others because we are right, and that they must not persecute us because they are wrong, we must beware of admitting

8064-434: Is man himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even churches erected and prayers said, by machinery—by automatons in human form—it would be a considerable loss to exchange for these automatons even the men and women who at present inhabit the more civilised parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and will produce. Human nature

8232-420: Is most sensible? In my view it is suffering, or sadness, and extended consideration of the centrality of suffering in Hardy's work should be the first duty of the true critic for which the work is still waiting [...] Any approach to his work, as to any writer's work, must seek first of all to determine what element is peculiarly his, which imaginative note he strikes most plangently, and to deny that in this case it

8400-428: Is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. In the fourth chapter, J. S. Mill explains a system in which a person can discern what aspects of life should be governed by the individual and which by society. Generally, he holds that

8568-657: Is now recognised as one of the great poets of the 20th century, and his verse had a profound influence on later writers, including Robert Frost , W. H. Auden , Dylan Thomas and Philip Larkin . Larkin included 27 poems by Hardy compared with only nine by T. S. Eliot in his edition of The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse in 1973. There were fewer poems by W. B. Yeats . Poet-critic Donald Davie 's Thomas Hardy and English Poetry considers Hardy's contribution to ongoing poetic tradition at length and in creative depth. Davie's friend Thom Gunn also wrote on Hardy and acknowledged his stature and example. Hardy's family

SECTION 50

#1732844608690

8736-530: Is passed to the president of the British Liberal Democrats as a symbol of office . Mill's marriage to Harriet Taylor Mill greatly influenced the concepts in On Liberty , which was published shortly after she died. According to his autobiography, On Liberty was first conceived as a short essay in 1854. As the ideas developed, the essay was expanded, rewritten and "sedulously" corrected by Mill and his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill . After suffering

8904-608: Is possible. However, the changes were gradual since the social realism tradition was so ingrained into the psyche of the Soviet literati that even dissidents followed the habits of this type of composition, rarely straying from its formal and ideological mold. The Soviet socialist realism did not exactly emerge on the very day it was promulgated in the Soviet Union in 1932 by way of a decree that abolished independent writers' organizations. This movement had existed for at least fifteen years and

9072-414: Is seen as tantamount to complicity in a creating a process wherein "the artefactual nature of reality is overlooked or even concealed." According to Catherine Gallagher , realistic fiction invariably undermines, in practice, the ideology it purports to exemplify because if appearances were self-sufficient, there would probably be no need for novels. This can be demonstrated in literary naturalism's focus in

9240-443: Is the most prominent representative of 19th-century realism in fiction through the inclusion of specific detail and recurring characters. His La Comédie humaine , a vast collection of nearly 100 novels, was the most ambitious scheme ever devised by a writer of fiction—nothing less than a complete contemporary history of his countrymen. Realism is also an important aspect of the works of Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895). Many of

9408-408: Is the objection that the truth will necessarily survive persecution and that society need only teach the grounds for truth, not the objections to it. Near the end of Chapter 2, Mill states that "unmeasured vituperation, enforced on the side of prevailing opinion, deters people from expressing contrary opinion, and from listening to those who express them." In the third chapter, J. S. Mill points out

9576-558: Is the sometimes gentle, sometimes ironic, sometimes bitter but always passive apprehension of suffering is, I think, wrong-headed. In Two on a Tower , for example, Hardy takes a stand against these rules of society with a story of love that crosses the boundaries of class. The reader is forced to reconsider the conventions set up by society for the relationships between men and women. Nineteenth-century society had conventions, which were enforced. In this novel Swithin St Cleeve's idealism pits him against such contemporary social constraints. In

9744-415: Is the usage of a language which coincides with the characters' social condition and their level of education: therefore, if the protagonists of the story are e.g., peasants, they will use a popular, lowbrow language; middle class characters will speak in a higher, more raffinate way. The works often present terms deriving from vernaculars and regional Italian , especially Sicilian . Historical realism

9912-410: The 1848 Revolution . The realist painters rejected Romanticism , which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. Realism as a movement in literature was a post-1848 phenomenon, according to its first theorist Jules-Français Champfleury. It aims to reproduce " objective reality ", and focuses on showing every day, quotidian activities and life, primarily among

10080-545: The Baptist Church . Hardy flirted with conversion, but decided against it. Bastow went to Australia and maintained a long correspondence with Hardy, but eventually Hardy tired of these exchanges and the correspondence ceased. This concluded Hardy's links with the Baptists. The irony and struggles of life, coupled with his naturally curious mind, led him to question the traditional Christian view of God: The Christian God –

10248-573: The Boer Wars and World War I , including "Drummer Hodge", "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" and " The Man He Killed "; his work had a profound influence on other war poets such as Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon . Hardy in these poems often used the viewpoint of ordinary soldiers and their colloquial speech. A theme in the Wessex Poems is the long shadow that the Napoleonic Wars cast over

SECTION 60

#1732844608690

10416-457: The Chinese civilization . Therefore, Mill concludes that actions in themselves do not matter. Rather, the person behind the action and the action together are valuable. He writes: It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely

10584-454: The Grand Guignol at the end of the century. Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872), known today as the "national author of Finland", wrote his only novel The Seven Brothers (1870), which was strongly influenced by Cervantes , and which received at time a very negative reception from critics because its contemporary descriptions of the life of a Finnish peasants in an unadorned realism, long before

10752-608: The National Trust . Hardy's first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady , finished by 1867, failed to find a publisher. He then showed it to his mentor and friend, the Victorian poet and novelist George Meredith , who felt that The Poor Man and the Lady would be too politically controversial and might damage Hardy's ability to publish in the future. So Hardy followed his advice and he did not try further to publish it. He subsequently destroyed

10920-537: The Nobel Prize in Literature . He was nominated again for the prize 11 years later and received a total of 25 nominations until 1927. He was at least once, in 1923, one of the final candidates for the prize, but was not awarded. Hardy's interest in the theatre dated from the 1860s. He corresponded with various would-be adapters over the years, including Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886 and Jack Grein and Charles Jarvis in

11088-633: The North of England , and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the genre. The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger , for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands . The conventions of

11256-421: The tyranny of government, which, in his view, needs to be controlled by the liberty of the citizens. He divides this control of authority into two mechanisms: necessary rights belonging to citizens, and the "establishment of constitutional checks by which the consent of the community, or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of

11424-518: The "Authors' Declaration", justifying Britain's involvement in the First World War . This manifesto declared that the German invasion of Belgium had been a brutal crime, and that Britain "could not without dishonour have refused to take part in the present war." Hardy was horrified by the destruction caused by the war, pondering that "I do not think a world in which such fiendishness is possible to be worth

11592-489: The 1820s, and research into these has provided insight into how Hardy used them in his works. The opening chapter of The Mayor of Casterbridge , for example, written in 1886, was based on press reports of wife-selling. In the year of his death Mrs Hardy published The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1841–1891 , compiled largely from contemporary notes, letters, diaries and biographical memoranda, as well as from oral information in conversations extending over many years. Hardy's work

11760-430: The 19th century, as seen, for example, in "The Sergeant's Song" and "Leipzig". The Napoleonic War is the subject of The Dynasts . Some of Hardy's more famous poems are from Poems 1912–13 , which later became part of Satires of Circumstance (1914), written following the death of his wife Emma in 1912. They had been estranged for 20 years, and these lyric poems express deeply felt "regret and remorse". Poems like "After

11928-503: The Great , were historically beneficial to people not yet fit to rule themselves. J. S. Mill concludes the Introduction by discussing what he claimed were the three basic liberties in order of importance: While Mill admits that these freedoms could—in certain situations—be pushed aside, he claims that in contemporary and civilised societies there is no justification for their removal. In

12096-456: The Introduction to The Human Comedy (1842) Balzac "claims that poetic creation and scientific creation are closely related activities, manifesting the tendency of realists towards taking over scientific methods". The artists of realism used the achievements of contemporary science, the strictness and precision of the scientific method, in order to understand reality. The positivist spirit in science presupposes feeling contempt towards metaphysics,

12264-497: The Native (1878). In 1880, Hardy published his only historical novel, The Trumpet-Major . A further move to Wimborne saw Hardy write Two on a Tower , published in 1882, a romance story set in the world of astronomy. Then in 1885, they moved for the last time, to Max Gate , a house outside Dorchester designed by Hardy and built by his brother. There he wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887) and Tess of

12432-435: The United States during the late nineteenth century on the larger forces that determine the lives of its characters, as depicted in agricultural machines portrayed as immense and terrible, shredding "entangled" human bodies without compunction. The machines were used as a metaphor , but the metaphor contributed to the perception that such narratives were more like myth than reality. There are also critics who fault realism in

12600-472: The abbey's famous Poets' Corner . A compromise was reached whereby his heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner. Hardy's estate at death was valued at £ 95,418 (equivalent to £7,300,000 in 2023). Shortly after Hardy's death, the executors of his estate burnt his letters and notebooks, but twelve notebooks survived, one of them containing notes and extracts of newspaper stories from

12768-560: The absence of a fixed definition. The argument is that there is no pure form of realism and the position that it is almost impossible to find literature that is not in fact realist, at least to some extent while, and that whenever one searches for pure realism, it vanishes. J.P. Stern countered this position when he maintained that this "looseness" or "untidiness" makes the term indispensable in common and literary discourse alike. Others also dismiss it as obvious and simple-minded while denying realistic aesthetic, branding as pretentious since it

12936-428: The actions might be "tolerated" in private, promoting the actions (i.e. being a pimp or keeping a gambling house) "should not be permitted." He reaches a similar conclusion with acts of indecency, concluding that public indecency is condemnable. Mill continues by addressing the question of social interference in suicide. He states that the purpose of liberty is to allow a person to pursue their interest. Therefore, when

13104-523: The age of eight. For several years he attended Mr. Last's Academy for Young Gentlemen in Dorchester, where he learned Latin and demonstrated academic potential. Because Hardy's family lacked the means for a university education, his formal education ended at the age of sixteen, when he became apprenticed to James Hicks, a local architect. He worked on the design of the new church at nearby Athelhampton, situated just opposite Athelhampton House where he painted

13272-453: The artist, who can in turn represent this 'reality' faithfully. As literary critic Ian Watt states in The Rise of the Novel , modern realism "begins from the position that truth can be discovered by the individual through the senses" and as such "it has its origins in Descartes and Locke , and received its first full formulation by Thomas Reid in the middle of the eighteenth century." In

13440-426: The arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, as well as implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the accurate depiction of lifeforms, perspective, and

13608-483: The beginnings of the railways, and the state of contemporary medical science. Middlemarch also shows the deeply reactionary mindset within a settled community facing the prospect of what to many is unwelcome social, political and technological change. While George Gissing (1857–1903), author of New Grub Street (1891), amongst many other works, has traditionally been viewed as a naturalist, mainly influenced by Émile Zola , Jacob Korg has suggested that George Eliot

13776-440: The book in the 19th century came chiefly from thinkers who felt that Mill's concept of liberty left the door open for barbarism, such as Thomas Carlyle , James Fitzjames Stephen and Matthew Arnold . In more recent times, although On Liberty garnered adverse criticism, it has been largely received as an important classic of political thought for its ideas and accessibly lucid style. Denise Evans and Mary L. Onorato summarise

13944-433: The book: "After these [hostile] verdicts from the press its next misfortune was to be burnt by a bishop – probably in his despair at not being able to burn me". Despite this, Hardy had become a celebrity by the 1900s, but some argue that he gave up writing novels because of the criticism of both Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure . The Well-Beloved , first serialised in 1892, was published in 1897. Considered

14112-450: The cause of death was cited, on his death certificate, as "cardiac syncope", with "old age" given as a contributory factor. His funeral was on 16 January at Westminster Abbey , and it proved a controversial occasion because Hardy had wished for his body to be interred at Stinsford in the same grave as his first wife, Emma. His family and friends concurred; however, his executor, Sir  Sydney Carlyle Cockerell , insisted that he be placed in

14280-432: The character of Henry Knight in A Pair of Blue Eyes was based on Horace Moule. Throughout his life, Hardy sought a rationale for believing in an afterlife or a timeless existence, turning first to spiritualists, such as Henri Bergson , and then to Albert Einstein and J. M. E. McTaggart , considering their philosophy on time and space in relation to immortality. Sites associated with Hardy's own life and which inspired

14448-451: The claim that society ought to punish the harmful consequences of the irrational conduct, but not the irrational conduct itself which is a personal matter. Furthermore, he notes the societal obligation is not to ensure that each individual is moral throughout adulthood. Rather, he states that, by educating youth, society has the opportunity and duty to ensure that a generation, as a whole, is generally moral. Where some may object that there

14616-399: The cult of the fact, experiment and proof, confidence in science and the progress that it brings, as well as striving to give a scientific form to studying social and moral phenomena." In the late 18th century Romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the previous Age of Reason and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature found in

14784-484: The d'Urbervilles (1891), the last of which attracted criticism for its sympathetic portrayal of a "fallen woman", and initially it was refused publication. Its subtitle, A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented , was intended to raise the eyebrows of the Victorian middle classes. Jude the Obscure , published in 1895, met with an even stronger negative response from the Victorian public because of its controversial treatment of sex, religion and marriage. Its apparent attack on

14952-457: The details of light and colour. Realist works of art may emphasize the ugly or sordid, such as works of social realism , regionalism , or kitchen sink realism . There have been various realism movements in the arts, such as the opera style of verismo , literary realism, theatrical realism and Italian neorealist cinema . The realism art movement in painting began in France in the 1850s, after

15120-666: The dominant philosophy of the 18th century, as well as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution . It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education and the natural sciences . 19th-century realism was in its turn a reaction to Romanticism, and for this reason it is also commonly derogatorily referred to as traditional or "bourgeois realism". However, not all writers of Victorian literature produced works of realism. The rigidities, conventions, and other limitations of Victorian realism prompted in their turn

15288-457: The economy, Mill argues that economies function best when left to their own devices. Therefore, government intervention, though theoretically permissible, would be counterproductive. Later, he attacks government-run economies as "despotic." He believes that if the government ran the economy, then all people would aspire to be part of a bureaucracy that had no incentive to further the interests of any but itself. Next Mill investigates in what ways

15456-499: The everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and who are critical of the social structures that maintain these conditions. While the movement's artistic styles vary from nation to nation, it almost always uses a form of descriptive or critical realism. Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre , art , novels , film and television plays , which used

15624-583: The external personality – has been replaced by the intelligence of the First Cause...the replacement of the old concept of God as all-powerful by a new concept of universal consciousness. The 'tribal god, man-shaped, fiery-faced and tyrannous' is replaced by the 'unconscious will of the Universe' which progressively grows aware of itself and 'ultimately, it is to be hoped, sympathetic'. Scholars have debated Hardy's religious leanings for years, often unable to reach

15792-414: The facts concerned with crossing the bridge, he would not desire to cross the bridge), it is permissible to forcibly stop the person from crossing the bridge. He qualifies the assertion stating that, if the means are available, it is better to warn the unaware person. With regard to taxing to deter agents from buying dangerous products, he makes a distinction. He states that to tax solely to deter purchases

15960-610: The first novel by John Cowper Powys , who was a contemporary of Lawrence, was "Dedicated with devoted admiration to the greatest poet and novelist of our age Thomas Hardy". Powys's later novel Maiden Castle (1936) is set in Dorchester , which was Hardy's Casterbridge , and was intended by Powys to be a "rival" to Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge . Maiden Castle is the last of Powys's so-called Wessex novels, Wolf Solent (1929), A Glastonbury Romance (1932) and Weymouth Sands (1934), which are set in Somerset and Dorset. Hardy

16128-402: The genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as Coronation Street and EastEnders . In art, "Kitchen Sink School" was a term used by critic David Sylvester to describe painters who depicted social realist –type scenes of domestic life. Socialist realism is the official Soviet art form that was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934 and

16296-399: The genre were often (yet not always) poor, disadvantaged and scarcely educated people, who struggled against adversities. They often came from popular environments and their lifestyle was challenged by the progress that society was experiencing in the late 19th century; such characters usually could not adapt themselves to that progress. Other times, the protagonists were Bourgeois . Verismo

16464-407: The governing power." Because society was—in its early stages—subjected to such turbulent conditions (i.e. small population and constant war), it was forced to accept rule "by a master." However, as mankind progressed, it became conceivable for the people to rule themselves. Mill admits that this new form of society seemed immune to tyranny because "there was no fear of tyrannizing over self." Despite

16632-479: The high hopes of the Enlightenment , Mill argues that the democratic ideals were not as easily met as expected. First, even in democracy, the rulers were not always the same sort of people as the ruled. Second, there is a risk of a " tyranny of the majority " in which the many oppress the few who, according to democratic ideals, have just as much a right to pursue their legitimate ends. In Mill's view, tyranny of

16800-478: The idea that we do not often understand what is real correctly. To present reality, we draw on what is "real" according to how we remember it as well as how we experience it. However, remembered or experienced reality does not always correspond to what the truth is. Instead, we often obtain a distorted version of it that is only related to what is out there or how things really are. Realism is criticized for its supposed inability to address this challenge and such failure

16968-459: The importance of Hardy for him, even though this work is a platform for Lawrence's own developing philosophy rather than a more standard literary study. The influence of Hardy's treatment of character, and Lawrence's own response to the central metaphysic behind many of Hardy's novels, helped significantly in the development of The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920). Wood and Stone (1915),

17136-440: The importance of a diverse education that teaches opposing views (e.g. Kant and Locke ). He concludes by stating that it is legitimate for states to forbid marriages unless the couple can prove that they have "means of supporting a family" through education and other basic necessities. J. S. Mill concludes by stating three general reasons to object to governmental interference: He summarises his thesis, stating: The worth of

17304-483: The inherent value of individuality since individuality is ex vi termini (i.e. by definition) the thriving of the human person through the higher pleasures. He argues that a society ought to attempt to promote individuality as it is a prerequisite for creativity and diversity. With this in mind, Mill believes that conformity is dangerous. He states that he fears that Western civilization approaches this well-intentioned conformity to praiseworthy maxims characterized by

17472-448: The institution of marriage caused strain on Hardy's already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as autobiographical. Some booksellers sold the novel in brown paper bags, and Walsham How , the Bishop of Wakefield , is reputed to have burnt his copy. In his postscript of 1912, Hardy humorously referred to this incident as part of the career of

17640-428: The interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection. Mill first applies these principles to the economy. He concludes that free markets are preferable to those controlled by governments. While it may seem, because "trade is a social act," that the government ought intervene in

17808-446: The landscape of Hardy's novels include Ireland's Mai-Dun (1921) and Holst's Egdon Heath: A Homage to Thomas Hardy (1927). Hardy has been a significant influence on Nigel Blackwell, frontman of the post-punk British rock band Half Man Half Biscuit , who has often incorporated phrases (some obscure) by or about Hardy into his song lyrics. Literary realism Broadly defined as "the representation of reality", realism in

17976-488: The life of rural dwellers, including bullock drivers , squatters and itinerant travellers, in southern New South Wales and Victoria , during the 1880s. Catherine Helen Spence 's Clara Morison (1854), which detailed a Scottish woman's immigration to Adelaide, South Australia , in a time when many people were leaving the freely settled state of South Australia to claim fortunes in the gold rushes of Victoria and New South Wales. The burgeoning literary concept that Australia

18144-451: The life of the lower classes. In France in addition to melodramas , popular and bourgeois theater in the mid-century turned to realism in the "well-made" bourgeois farces of Eugène Marin Labiche and the moral dramas of Émile Augier . Critics of realism cite that depicting reality is not often realistic, with some observers calling it "imaginary" or "project[ed]". This argument is based on

18312-439: The majority is worse than tyranny of government because it is not limited to a political function. Where one can be protected from a tyrant, it is much harder to be protected "against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling." The prevailing opinions within society will be the basis of all rules of conduct within society; thus there can be no safeguard in law against the tyranny of the majority. Mill's proof goes as follows:

18480-426: The majority opinion may not be the correct opinion. The only justification for a person's preference for a particular moral belief is that it is that person's preference. On a particular issue, people will align themselves either for or against that issue; the side of greatest volume will prevail, but is not necessarily correct. In conclusion to this analysis of past governments, Mill proposes a single standard for which

18648-476: The manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience. Mill spends

18816-530: The manuscript, but used some of the ideas in his later work. In his recollections in Life and Work , Hardy described the book as "socialistic, not to say revolutionary; yet not argumentatively so." After he abandoned his first novel, Hardy wrote two new ones that he hoped would have more commercial appeal, Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), both of which were published anonymously; it

18984-511: The middle- or lower-class society, without romantic idealization or dramatization. It may be regarded as the general attempt to depict subjects as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality , without embellishment or interpretation and "in accordance with secular, empirical rules." As such, the approach inherently implies a belief that such reality is ontologically independent of man's conceptual schemes, linguistic practices and beliefs, and thus can be known (or knowable) to

19152-417: The modern reception of On Liberty , stating: "[c]ritics regard his essay On Liberty as a seminal work in the development of British liberalism. Enhanced by his powerful, lucid, and accessible prose style, Mill's writings on government, economics, and logic suggest a model for society that remains compelling and relevant." As one sign of the book's importance, a copy of On Liberty is the symbol of office for

19320-405: The more general development of philosophical realism, middle-class economic individualism and Puritan individualism. He also claims that the form addressed the interests and capacities of the new middle-class reading public and the new book trade evolving in response to them. As tradesmen themselves, Defoe and Richardson had only to 'consult their own standards' to know that their work would appeal to

19488-407: The novels in this period, including Balzac's, were published in newspapers in serial form , and the immensely popular realist "roman feuilleton" tended to specialize in portraying the hidden side of urban life (crime, police spies, criminal slang), as in the novels of Eugène Sue . Similar tendencies appeared in the theatrical melodramas of the period and, in an even more lurid and gruesome light, in

19656-427: The only harm done by a public act which is harmless in private is that it is offensive. Warburton notes that some people argue that morality is the basis of society, and that society is the basis of individual happiness. Therefore, if morality is undermined, so is individual happiness. Hence, since Mill claims that governments ought to protect the individual's ability to seek happiness, governments ought to intervene in

19824-432: The other, merely refrain from impeding their personal decisions. While Mill generally opposes the religiously motivated societal interference, he admits that it is conceivably permissible for religiously motivated laws to prohibit the use of what no religion obligates. For example, a Muslim state could feasibly prohibit pork. However, Mill still prefers a policy of society minding its own business. This last chapter applies

19992-443: The parish church at Puddletown, close to his home at Max Gate. He became a frequent visitor at Athelhampton House , which he knew from his teenage years, and in his letters he encouraged the owner, Alfred Cart de Lafontaine, to conduct the restoration of that building in a sensitive way. In 1914, Hardy was one of 53 leading British authors—including H. G. Wells , Rudyard Kipling and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle —who signed their names to

20160-411: The perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish. On Liberty was enormously popular in the years following its publication. Thomas Hardy recalled later in life that undergraduates in the 1860s knew the book almost by heart. Criticisms of

20328-439: The personal action. He argues that a person who is empirically prone to act violently (i.e. harm society) from drunkenness (i.e. a personal act) should be uniquely restricted from the drinking. He further stipulates that repeat offenders should be punished more than first time offenders. On the subject of fornication and gambling, Mill has no conclusive answer, stating, "[t]here are arguments on both sides." He suggests that while

20496-454: The perspective of a specific religion, some claim that he does not account for what certain religious beliefs would entail when governing a society. Some religions believe that they have a God given duty to enforce religious norms. For them, it seems impossible for their religious beliefs to be wrong, i.e. the beliefs are infallible. Therefore, according to Warburton, Mill's principle of total freedom of speech may not apply. The harm principle

20664-421: The power, would be justified in silencing mankind. This claim seems to go against the principle of utilitarianism, that it is permissible that one should be harmed so that the majority could benefit. Warburton argues that Mill is too optimistic about the outcome of free speech. Warburton suggests that there are situations in which it would cause more happiness to suppress truth than to permit it. For example, if

20832-603: The president of the Liberal Democrat Party in England. The historian Peter Marshall described On Liberty as "one of the great classics of libertarian thought ", due to its exaltation of individual freedoms . Mill makes it clear throughout On Liberty that he "regard[s] utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions", a standard he inherited from his father, a follower of Jeremy Bentham . Though J. S. Mill claims that all of his principles on liberty appeal to

21000-455: The price paid for an inestimable good." He claims that there are three sorts of beliefs that can be had—wholly false, partly true, and wholly true—all of which, according to Mill, benefit the common good: First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain

21168-526: The principles laid out in the previous sections. He begins by summarising these principles: The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as are prejudicial to

21336-471: The proper upbringing of children. Plank has asserted that Mill fails to account for physical harm, solely concerning himself with spiritual wellbeing. He also argues that, while much of Mill's theory depends upon a distinction between private and public harm, Mill seems not to have provided a clear focus on or distinction between the private and public realms. Nigel Warburton states that though Mill encourages religious tolerance, because he does not speak from

21504-412: The protagonists, is left literally hanging off a cliff. Elements of Hardy's fiction reflect the influence of the commercially successful sensation fiction of the 1860s, particularly the legal complications in novels such as Desperate Remedies (1871), Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) and Two on a Tower (1882). In Far from the Madding Crowd , Hardy first introduced the idea of calling the region in

21672-588: The realism genre developed a detached description of the social and economic conditions of people in their time and environment. Major figures of Italian Verismo include Luigi Capuana , Giovanni Verga , Federico De Roberto , Matilde Serao , Salvatore Di Giacomo , and Grazia Deledda , who in 1926 received the Nobel Prize for Literature . Later realist writers included Fyodor Dostoevsky , Leo Tolstoy , Benito Pérez Galdós , Guy de Maupassant , Anton Chekhov , Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) , Machado de Assis , Eça de Queiroz , Henryk Sienkiewicz , Bolesław Prus and, in

21840-695: The remaining years of his life. Indeed, his play The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall at Tintagel in Lyonnesse (1923) was written to be performed by the Hardy Players. From the 1880s, Hardy became increasingly involved in campaigns to save ancient buildings from destruction, or destructive modernisation, and he became an early member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings . His correspondence refers to his unsuccessful efforts to prevent major alterations to

22008-407: The revolt of modernism . Starting around 1900, the driving motive of modernist literature was the criticism of the 19th-century bourgeois social order and world view, which was countered with an antirationalist, antirealist and antibourgeois program. Social realism is an international art movement that includes the work of painters, printmakers, photographers and filmmakers who draw attention to

22176-422: The risk entailed in selling poison or like products (e.g. alcohol), he sees no danger to liberty to require warning labels on the product. Again, Mill applies his principle. He considers the right course of action when an agent sees a person about to cross a condemned bridge without being aware of the risk. Mill states that because the agent presumably has interest in not crossing a dangerous bridge (i.e. if he knew

22344-513: The same decade. Neither adaptation came to fruition, but Hardy showed he was potentially enthusiastic about such a project. One play that was performed, however, caused him a certain amount of pain. His experience of the controversy and lukewarm critical reception that had surrounded his and Comyns Carr 's adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd in 1882 left him wary of the damage that adaptations could do to his literary reputation. So, in 1908, he so readily and enthusiastically became involved with

22512-576: The saving" and "better to let western 'civilization' perish, and let the black and yellow races have a chance." He wrote to John Galsworthy that "the exchange of international thought is the only possible salvation for the world." Shortly after helping to excavate the Fordington mosaic , Hardy became ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died at Max Gate just after 9 pm on 11 January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed;

22680-420: The second chapter, J. S. Mill attempts to prove his claim from the first chapter that opinions ought never to be suppressed. Looking to the consequences of suppressing opinions, he concludes that opinions ought never to be suppressed, stating, "Such prejudice, or oversight, when it [i.e. false belief] occurs, is altogether an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always exempt, and must be regarded as

22848-466: The semi-fictional region of Wessex ; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in south-west and south central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd , were listed in the top 50 on the BBC 's survey The Big Read . Thomas Hardy

23016-525: The settings of his novels continue to attract literary tourists and casual visitors. For locations in Hardy's novels see: Thomas Hardy's Wessex , and the Thomas Hardy's Wessex research site, which includes maps. Hardy corresponded with and visited Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell at Wenlock Abbey and many of Lady Catherine's books are inspired by Hardy, who was very fond of her. D. H. Lawrence 's Study of Thomas Hardy (1914, first published 1936) indicates

23184-447: The story would have taken an entirely different path." Indeed, Hardy's main characters often seem to be held in fate's overwhelming grip. In 1898, Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems , a collection of poems written over 30 years. While some suggest that Hardy gave up writing novels following the harsh criticism of Jude the Obscure in 1896, the poet C. H. Sisson calls this "hypothesis" "superficial and absurd". In

23352-658: The tower collapsed in 1863, and All Saints' parish church in Windsor, Berkshire , in 1862–64. A reredos , possibly designed by Hardy, was discovered behind panelling at All Saints' in August 2016. In the mid-1860s, Hardy was in charge of the excavation of part of the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church before its destruction when the Midland Railway was extended to a new terminus at St Pancras . Hardy never felt at home in London, because he

23520-503: The twentieth century Hardy published only poetry. Thomas Hardy published Poems of the Past and the Present in 1901, which contains " The Darkling Thrush " (originally titled "The Century's End"), one of his best known poems about the turn of the century . Thomas Hardy wrote in a great variety of poetic forms, including lyrics , ballads , satire, dramatic monologues and dialogue, as well as

23688-546: The twentieth century, as the working-class community of Sydney proliferated, the focus was shifted from the bush archetype to a more urban, inner-city setting: William Lane 's The Working Man's Paradise (1892), Christina Stead 's Seven Poor Men of Sydney (1934) and Ruth Park 's The Harp in the South (1948) all depicted the harsh, gritty reality of working class Sydney. Patrick White 's novels Tree of Man (1955) and Voss (1957) fared particularly well and in 1973 White

23856-424: The ultimate authority of utilitarianism, according to Nigel Warburton , much of the essay can seem divorced from his supposed final court of appeals. Mill seems to idealize liberty and rights at the cost of utility. For instance, Mill writes: If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had

24024-426: The underlying forces (e.g., the environment or heredity) influencing the actions of its subjects. Naturalistic works often include supposed sordid subject matter, for example, Émile Zola 's frank treatment of sexuality , as well as pervasive pessimism. Naturalistic works tend to focus on the darker aspects of life, including poverty, racism , violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution , and filth. As

24192-548: The way it supposedly defines itself as a reaction to the excesses of literary genres such as Romanticism and the Gothic – those that focus on the exotic, sentimental, and sensational narratives. Some scholars began to call this an impulse to contradict so that in the end, the limit that it imposes on itself leads to "either the representation of verifiable and objective truth or the merely relative, some partial, subjective truth, therefore no truth at all." There are also critics who cite

24360-495: The way their characters act. This does not happen in Verismo: in fact, Verist authors such as Giovanni Verga usually believe that reality cannot be changed through literature, so they do not make any comment on their characters and tend to distance themselves from the narration, by adopting an objective, non-intrusive perspective (yet the authors somehow manage to let the readers understand their point of view). A typical feature of Verismo

24528-447: The west of England, where his novels are set, Wessex . Wessex had been the name of an early Saxon kingdom, in approximately the same part of England. Far from the Madding Crowd was successful enough for Hardy to give up architectural work and pursue a literary career. Over the next 25 years, Hardy produced 10 more novels. Subsequently, Hardy moved from London to Yeovil , and then to Sturminster Newton , where he wrote The Return of

24696-412: The work achieved the status of a national novel. Gustave Flaubert 's (1821–1880) acclaimed novels Madame Bovary (1857), which reveals the tragic consequences of romanticism on the wife of a provincial doctor, and Sentimental Education (1869) represent perhaps the highest stages in the development of French realism. Flaubert also wrote other works in an entirely different style and his romanticism

24864-429: Was Anglican , but not especially devout. He was baptised at the age of five weeks and attended church, where his father and uncle contributed to music. He did not attend the local Church of England school, instead being sent to Mr Last's school, three miles away. As a young adult, he befriended Henry R. Bastow (a Plymouth Brethren man), who also worked as a pupil architect, and who was preparing for adult baptism in

25032-500: Was 39 years his junior. He remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry. In his later years, he kept a Wire Fox Terrier named Wessex, who was notoriously ill-tempered. Wessex's grave stone can be found on the Max Gate grounds. In 1910, Hardy had been appointed a Member of the Order of Merit and was also for the first time nominated for

25200-721: Was a greater influence. Other novelists, such as Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) and Anglo-Irishman George Moore (1852–1933), consciously imitated the French realists. Bennett's most famous works are the Clayhanger trilogy (1910–18) and The Old Wives' Tale (1908). These books draw on his experience of life in the Staffordshire Potteries , an industrial area encompassing the six towns that now make up Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire , England. George Moore, whose most famous work

25368-471: Was a greatly influential and well-received work. Some classical liberals and libertarians have criticized it for its apparent discontinuity with Utilitarianism , and vagueness in defining the arena within which individuals can contest government infringements on their personal freedom of action. The ideas presented in On Liberty have remained the basis of much political thought. It has remained in print since its initial publication. A copy of On Liberty

25536-481: Was a mainly unorganized literary movement that sought to depict believable everyday reality , as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism , in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic or even supernatural treatment. Naturalism was an outgrowth of literary realism, influenced by Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution. Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, naturalism also attempts to determine "scientifically"

25704-593: Was a rejection of, according to what the Sydney Bulletin called in 1881 a "romantic identity" of the country. Most of the earliest writing in the colony was not literature in the most recent international sense, but rather journals and documentations of expeditions and environments, although literary style and preconceptions entered into the journal writing. Oftentimes in early Australian literature, romanticism and realism co-existed, as exemplified by Joseph Furphy 's Such Is Life (1897)–a fictional account of

25872-426: Was acutely conscious of class divisions and his own feelings of social inferiority. During this time he became interested in social reform and the works of John Stuart Mill . He was introduced by his Dorset friend Horace Moule to the works of Charles Fourier and Auguste Comte . Mill's essay On Liberty was one of Hardy's cures for despair, and in 1924 he declared that "my pages show harmony of view with" Mill. He

26040-515: Was admired by many younger writers, including D. H. Lawrence , John Cowper Powys and Virginia Woolf . In his autobiography Good-Bye to All That (1929), Robert Graves recalls meeting Hardy in Dorset in the early 1920s and how Hardy received him and his new wife warmly, and was encouraging about his work. Hardy's birthplace in Bockhampton and his house Max Gate , both in Dorchester, are owned by

26208-646: Was also attracted to Matthew Arnold 's and Leslie Stephen 's ideal of the urbane liberal freethinker. After five years, concerned about his health, he returned to Dorset, settling in Weymouth , and decided to dedicate himself to writing. In 1870, while on an architectural mission to restore the parish church of St Juliot in Cornwall, Hardy met and fell in love with Emma Gifford , whom he married on 17 September 1874, at St Peter's Church, Paddington , London. The couple rented St David's Villa, Southborough (now Surbiton ) for

26376-456: Was an extension of another, more distant country, was beginning to infiltrate into writing: "[those] who have at last understood the significance of Australian history as a transplanting of stocks and the sending down of roots in a new soil". Henry Handel Richardson , author of post- Federation novels such as Maurice Guest (1908) and The Getting of Wisdom (1910), was said to have been heavily influenced by French and Scandinavian realism. In

26544-487: Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature . A new kind of literary realism emerged in the late twentieth century, helmed by Helen Garner 's Monkey Grip (1977) which revolutionised contemporary fiction in Australia, though it has since emerged that the novel was diaristic and based on Garner's own experiences. Monkey Grip concerns itself with a single-mother living in a succession of Melbourne share-houses, as she navigates her increasingly obsessive relationship with

26712-494: Was born on 2 June 1840 in Higher Bockhampton (then Upper Bockhampton), a hamlet in the parish of Stinsford to the east of Dorchester in Dorset, England, where his father Thomas (1811–1892) worked as a stonemason and local builder. His parents had married at Melbury Osmond on 22 December 1839. His mother, Jemima (née Hand; 1813–1904), was well read, and she educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at

26880-864: Was clearly the starting point for the character of the novelist Edward Driffield in W. Somerset Maugham 's novel Cakes and Ale (1930). Thomas Hardy's works also feature prominently in the American playwright Christopher Durang 's The Marriage of Bette and Boo (1985), in which a graduate thesis analysing Tess of the d'Urbervilles is interspersed with analysis of Matt's family's neuroses. A number of notable English composers, including Gerald Finzi , Benjamin Britten , Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst set poems by Hardy to music. Others include Holst's daughter Imogen Holst , John Ireland , Muriel Herbert , Ivor Gurney and Robin Milford . Orchestral tone poems which evoke

27048-599: Was first seen during the Bolshevik Revolution . The 1934 declaration only formalized its canonical formulation through the speeches of the Andrei Zhdanov , the representative of the Party's Central Committee. The official definition of socialist realism has been criticized for its conflicting framework. While the concept itself is simple, discerning scholars struggle in reconciling its elements. According to Peter Kenez, "it

27216-457: Was impossible to reconcile the teleological requirement with realistic presentation," further stressing that "the world could either be depicted as it was or as it should be according to theory, but the two are obviously not the same." Naturalism was a literary movement or tendency from the 1880s to 1930s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity , and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. It

27384-431: Was inspired by French Naturalism, but differed from it in a significant way: in fact, Naturalist authors were more optimistic and believed that literature could have an influence on society and its development, therefore conceived the writer's role as charged with moral responsibilities and this is reflected in their works, which usually present comments by the authors and digressions where they express their opinion about

27552-459: Was later adopted by allied Communist parties worldwide. This form of realism held that successful art depicts and glorifies the proletariat 's struggle toward socialist progress. The Statute of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934 stated that socialist realism The strict adherence to the above tenets, however, began to crumble after the death of Stalin when writers started expanding the limits of what

27720-628: Was published to great acclaim in 1895, but he barely had time to bask in the attention before he died, at 28, having neglected his health. He has enjoyed continued success ever since—as a champion of the common man, a realist, and a symbolist. Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), is one of the best, if not the earliest, naturalistic American novel. It is the harrowing story of a poor, sensitive young girl whose uneducated, alcoholic parents utterly fail her. In love, and eager to escape her violent home life, she allows herself to be seduced into living with

27888-683: Was separate from its English Colonial beginnings. Common artistic motifs and characters that were represented in Australian realism were the Australian Outback , known simply as "the bush", in its harsh and volatile beauty, the British settlers, the Indigenous Australian , the squatter and the digger —although some of these bordered into a more mythic territory in much of Australia's art scene. A significant portion of Australia's early realism

28056-508: Was to publish it and to "consecrate it to her memory." The composition of this work was also indebted to the work of the German thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt , especially his essay On the Limits of State Action . Finally published in 1859, On Liberty was one of Mill's two most influential books (the other being Utilitarianism ). John Stuart Mill opens his essay by discussing the historical "struggle between authority and liberty," describing

28224-509: Was while working on the latter that he met Emma Gifford, who would become his wife. In 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes , a novel drawing on Hardy's courtship of Emma, was published under his own name. A plot device popularised by Charles Dickens , the term " cliffhanger " is considered to have originated with the serialised version of A Pair of Blue Eyes (published in Tinsley's Magazine between September 1872 and July 1873) in which Henry Knight, one of

#689310