Date of Award

1980

Document Type

Senior Scholars Paper (Open Access)

Department

Colby College. English Dept.

Advisor(s)

Eileen Curran

Second Advisor

Phyllis Mannocchi

Third Advisor

Yeager Hudson

Abstract

Hardy's novels and poetry have received extensive criticism, in due proportion to their merit. Hardy's short stories, however, have been virtually excluded from the annals of Hardy criticism, even though Hardy wrote over forty short stories, several of which are truly outstanding. In part, the reason for this neglect is because of the neglected state of the short story in Victorian England. Short fiction, published mainly only in periodicals and never collected in volume form, was obscured to a large extent by the highly popular serial novel. This thesis examines Thomas Hardy's short stories in the context of both the Victorian period and the Victorian short story genre, and explores the ways in which Thomas Hardy improved upon and deviated from some of the common types of short fiction being written in his day.

Keywords

Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 -- Criticism and interpretation

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