Poetic irony in Thomas Hardy's Satires of Circumstance.

To explore Thomas Hardy's poetic irony, this study uses Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan's poetics approach to narrative as a format for analyzing Hardy's Satires of Circumstances: Lyrics and Reveries, the volume chronologically and critically at the center of his poetical writing. Embedded in the book are two sequences of poems, "Poems of 1912-13" and "Satires of Circumstance in Fifteen Glimpses," representing two poles of Hardy's poetic irony--the subtle, psychological grappling with death and the pithy, humorous dramatizing of village life. The poems of the other two groups in the book, "Lyrics and Reveries" and "Miscellaneous Pieces," present a miscellany of perspectives and themes, affording examples of many shades of irony. Chapter 1 traces the development of irony in English literature, with attention to the epistemological and psychological influences of the nineteenth century, and provides an overview of narrative theory. Chapters 2 through 5 explore the varieties of ironic expression in the four groups of poems in Satires of Circumstance, using the poetics approach to analyze literary language, poetic structure, narrative elements, and reader response. These four chapters focus upon irony in narrative strategies, use of the doppelgänger motif, thematic ironic elements, and interweaving of ironic and ambiguous elements. The study concludes that Hardy's poetic irony exists in the opposition between levels of meaning in a poem, a strategy which involves the reader in judging the validity of the surface story level, causing him to question such elements as the reliability of the narrator, the underlying implications of the story, and the function of tonality. The ironic ideas in Hardy's poetry are enmeshed in irony-producing structures of narrative that impede the reader's progress through the story and refract meaning away from the surface story. Also, the resonance of a sequence of poems influences tone and reader response to individual poems, sometimes creating a kind of ironic field of influence. Since Hardy considered all poems stories, an understanding of the poetics of the story is enhanced by application of narrative approaches to discover textual strategies, even in shorter poems with elliptical stories. This study opens a new avenue of approach to Hardyan criticism in suggesting a relationship between Hardy's attention to the individual consciousness and his irony-producing narrative structures in the poetry.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Grantor

Baylor University.

Year dc:date.issued

1990

Author dc:creator

• Reynolds, Rebecca Bartlett.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Brooks, Roger L. (Roger Leon)

• Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 -- Criticism and interpretation.
• Irony in literature.

Statement dc:rights

• Baylor University works are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. Contact libraryquestions@baylor.edu for inquiries about permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2104/14697

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:baylor-ir.tdl.org:2104/14697