1st Edition

Thomas Hardy's Short Stories New Perspectives

    214 Pages
    by Routledge

    214 Pages
    by Routledge

    Thomas Hardy penned nearly fifty short stories, but in spite of this impressive number, his contributions to the genre have been relatively understudied. Bringing together an international group of scholars, this is the first edited collection devoted solely to Hardy's works of short fiction. The contributors take up topics related to their publication in periodicals, gender and community relationships, and narrative techniques. Taken together, the essays show that Hardy's short stories are important, not only for what they tell us about Hardy as a writer who straddles the divide between the traditionalist and the modernist, but also for how they reflect and inform the period in which he wrote.

    CONTENTS





    List of Figures



    Introduction



    Acknowledgements





    Part One: Periodical Publication



    1 Neither Tales nor Short Stories: Issues of Authorship, Readership, and Publishing in A



    Group of Noble Dames



    Graham Law





    2 "Moonlight Nights": Hardy, Christmas, and the Illustrated London News



    Siobhan Craft Brownson





    Part Two: Gender Relationships



    3"Getting life-leased at all cost": Marriage in Hardy’s Late Short Stories



    Suzanne Flynn





    4 Pregnant by a Portrait: The Dynamics of Desire for Hardy’s



    "Imaginative Woman"



    Deborah Manion





    5"Imaginative Sentiment": Love, Letters, and Literacy in Thomas Hardy’s Shorter Fiction



    Karin Koehler





    Part Three: Community Relationships



    6 Hardy and Humor: The Mores of Wessex



    Juliette Berning Schaefer





    7 Love, Deception, and Disguise in A Few Crusted Characters



    JoAnna Stephens Mink





    Part Four: Narrative Technique



    8 "To Correct the Misrelation": Reading Hardy’s Wessex Tales



    Neelanjana Basu





    9 Representations of the Body in Hardy’s Life’s Little Ironies



    Carolina Paganine



    10 Hardy’s Mercurial Narrator: "Breaking the Frame" in "A Changed Man"



    Keith Callis





    Notes on Contributors



    Index

    Biography

    Juliette Berning Schaefer is Associate Professor of English at Ohio Dominican University, USA, and Siobhan Craft Brownson is Associate Professor of English at Winthrop University, USA.