Thomas Hardy: Death and the afterlife in the poems.
Item
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Title
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Thomas Hardy: Death and the afterlife in the poems.
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Identifier
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AAI9325085
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identifier
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9325085
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Creator
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Cortus, Betty Maree.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Michael Timko
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Date
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1993
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English
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Abstract
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In his poetry Thomas Hardy oscillates between two different ways of viewing reality. In his most pessimistic moments he withdraws to a distance and envisions the universe as a vast impersonal network in which the human race is trapped, powerless to defend itself against the mindless force of the Immanent Will. Poems composed under the influence of this frame of mind are suffused with symbols of death. In Hardy's more sanguine moments, however, when his "evolutionary meliorism" gains ascendancy, he views the world closely, in all its particularity, perceiving mankind as possessing a measure of free will. Poems emanating from this view of life frequently contain allusions to a humanistic variety of afterlife which Hardy creates, despite his loss of religious faith, to challenge the sovereignty of death. The Hardyan afterlife is both finite and manifold. It is not the life everlasting after death of Christian theology, and it is encountered in a multitude of forms. The dead may be depicted as resting in a state of blissful slumber, or they may return to their old haunts as ghostly visitants. They may be transformed to rarefied essences adrift in the infinite and the eternal. They may be kept alive in the memory of the living, or be enshrined by their loved ones in art or memorial artifacts. They may achieve a semblance of immortality through their own works, by passing on their genes to their descendants, or by releasing their disintegrating atoms after death to be incorporated into other living organisms. At other times they permanently imprint their distinctive personalities on their environment. When Hardy's wide, universal perspective and his close-up, particular view of life are superimposed, death and the afterlife are held in perfect counterpoise, and at these times he projects his most vivid three-dimensional pictures of life in memorable poetry.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
