Force and Counterforce: The Rural-Urban Encounter in The Novels of Thomas Hardy and Premcand

The purpose of this study is to analyze the literary response of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) and Premcand (1880-1936) toward one of the major occurrences of their times--the upheaval of rural society through an encounter with urban-industrial forces. Considering the wide gulf in culture, geography, and history between imperial Victorian England in the late nineteenth century, and colonial Victorian India in the early twentieth, it is significant to the student of comparative literature that Hardy and Premcand share such a strikingly similar attitude. The comparison places an important modern phenomenon into a broad trans-cultural context, and the shared reaction of Hardy and Premcand becomes another manifest link between East and West. In a still broader context, this thematic similarity can be viewed in the light of "literary analogy." To see affinity between the two novelists is to recognize, ultimately, the universality of artistic experience.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Comparative and World Literature

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Hock, Zarina Manawwar

• Literature, Comparative

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8108540

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/68332