Tag: Thomas Hardy

Literature: An Introduction, Nineteenth, Shakespeare Plus, x Blogging

Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Henry IV

by michaelgriffith1 • April 24, 2015 • 2 Comments

Today we had some fabulous tutorials exploring the kind of language Shakespeare uses in the opening scenes of Henry IV. Here is the king trying to bind together his empire with a proposal that all the civil warmongering British unite in one force and go on a crusade to rescue Jerusalem from the “infidels”. This is such…

Nineteenth, x Blogging

Thomas Hardy’s Clym Yeobright: Madman? Heretic? or Blasphemer?

by michaelgriffith1 • April 20, 2015 • 1 Comment

In the last two pages of Return of the Native Hardy alludes to the fact that Clym preaching to the “heathmen and women” on Rainbarrow, just before his 33rd birthday echoes Jesus’s work on the Sermon on the Mount. Is this how Hardy wants us to see Clym, as a saviour to the unenlightened rustics of…

Nineteenth

Thomas Hardy: Searching for Ballast in a Crazy World!

by michaelgriffith1 • April 13, 2015 • 1 Comment

Egdon Heath (with Rainbarrow on the right) photographed May 2014- on location (Click to enlarge) Thomas Hardy, when describing Egdon Heath, the physical setting for his novel Return of the Native, describes it as “ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New.” For Hardy this was clearly a profound reality: experience of…