For more than thirty years, books and essays on Thomas Hardy have been at the forefront of developments in academic literary studies. This collection brings together exciting new readings of Hardy's work by established and emerging critics which also reflect on continuities and changes in contemporary literary studies. Covering a wide range of topics and approaches, Thomas Hardy and Contemporary Literary Studies shows how Hardy's writing continues to provoke its readers to re-examine important issues in literary criticism and critical and cultural theory. Contributors include Terry Eagleton and J. Hillis Miller.
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors A Note on Texts Used Introduction: Hardy and Literary Studies at the Turn of the Century; T.Dolin & P.Widdowson Flesh and Spirit in Thomas Hardy; T.Eagleton Hardy and the Limits of Culturalism; G.Davidson Speech Acts, Decisions, and Community in The Mayor of Casterbridge; J.Hillis Miller Hardy or James? Thoughts on Academic Literary Discrimination Today; S.During Hardy, Barbarism and the Transformations of Modernity; B.Neilson A Laodicean : Hardy and the Philosophy of Money; R.Ebbatson Story, History, Allegory: Some Ironies of Jude the Obscure from a Benjamin Perspective; M.Hollington The Contemporary, the All: Liberal Politics and the Origins of Wessex; T.Dolin 'Saying that now you are not as you were': Hardy's 'Poems of 1912-13'; L.M.Shires Hardy, History and Recorded Music; T.Armstrong Hardy and Contemporary Textual Studies: Authorial Intention in The Trumpet-Major; M.Rimmer Thomas Hardy at the End of Two Centuries: From Page to Screen; P.Widdowson Works Cited Index
