Hardy's Geography - by R Pite (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Hardy's Geography reconsiders a familiar element in Hardy's novels: their use of place and, specifically, of Dorset. Hardy said his Wessex was a 'partly real, partly dream-country'. This study examines how reality and dream interact in his work. Should we look for a real place corresponding to Casterbridge? What is the relation between one person's feelings for a place and society's view of it. Pite concludes that Hardy addresses these issues through a distinctive regional awareness.

Review Quotes

'Pite succeeds in teasing out a remarkable amount from his examining of the physical and imaginative maps of Wessex... Pite's critical style..moves deftly between the small details of physical movement and their broader significances; his study of how the topographical poles of Wessex also work as axes of cultural association...makes the book an important contribution not only to Hardy criticism but to the poetics of narrative space.' - Bharat Tandon, Times Literary Supplement

'As a schoolboy, Hardy recalls in his Life, he excelled at arithmetic and geography. It is hard to imagine a book devoted to Hardy and arithmetic; Raph Pite's study of Hardy's geography, however, is subtle and engrossing throughout. This is not so much a book about Hardy and landscape, or about the creation of Wessex - although it has much to say on both of these - as an investigation into Hardy's relation to geography as a body of knowledge both shaped by and impacting on a variety of cultural forces...One of the strengths of the book as a whole is its patience before the texts: precisely, it's unforcedness. It is, genuinely, a thoughtful book; and it deserves a thoughtful response.' - Phillip Mallett, The Thomas Hardy Association Review

About the Author

RALPH PITE is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool. He has published on Romanticism, in particular concerning Dante's influence, biography and environmentalism.