Haunted Hardy: Poetry, History, Memory

by T. Armstrong

Overview

Hardy was a poet of ghosts. In his poetry he describes himself as posthumous; as rekindling the cinders of passion; as the guardian of the dead forgotten by history; and as haunted by ghosts, particularly the spectre of the lost child (as in the rumour that he fathered a child in the 1860s). Using Derrida, Abraham and Torok and other theorists, and referring to Victorian debates on materialism, this book investigates ghostliness, historicity and memory in Hardy's poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349643813
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	11/10/2000
Edition description:	1st ed. 2000
Pages:	198
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

TIM ARMSTRONG is Reader in Modern English and American Literature at Royal Holloway University of London. He is the author of Modernism, Technology and the Body (1998), has edited Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems (1993), American Bodies (1996) and co-edited Beyond the Pleasure Dome: Writing and Addiction from the Romantics (1994).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction Supplementarity The Ghosts of Thought The Child in Time The Politics of the Dead History, Catastrophe, Typology Mourning and Intertextuality Notes Index

Editorial Reviews

'Haunted Hardy is a product of much solid scholarship...a welcome addition to...the discussion of Hardy's poetry.' - English Language Teaching

From the Publisher

Armstrong (modern English and American literature, U. of London) argues that the idea of haunting is central to the work of British writer Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). He finds evidence in Hardy's second career as a poet; the phantom of the lost child that permeates his writings; his elegiac writings and intertextual references; and how he thinks about history, language, and consciousness. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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