As in all art, each masterpiece has a distinct mark from their specific artist. The literary arts are no exception, with each author leaving a prominent rhythm, style and language. Thomas Hardy is known for his poems of separation. Thomas found love when he was 30 years old, but his relationship went sour when his marriage to Emma Gifford became estranged. Emma later died leaving her husband an outcast. It was not until 1914 when Thomas Hardy married his second wife, Florence, that he understood how much he missed his first wife. In his poems, Hardy focuses on withering love and the being miserable after a loss. Also, he uses rhyme scheme, multiple cesuras and end stops and symbolism to conceal a deeper meaning of the poem. The two poems that connect the two aspects of Thomas Hardy’s style are Your Last Drive and The Workbox.
The poem Your Last Drive captures all of Hardy’s unique traits in one poem. The title starting with “Your”
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He may not have loved her, but once she was gone he realized how much he missed her. The poem Your Last Drive is a very palpable poem. Hardy wrote this poem with the intention of sorting out his emotions. On the other hand, the poem The Workbox has a deeper meaning and possesses many qualities of a Hardy poem. Thomas Hardy focuses on making this poem fluent and meaningful rather than the plain and ordinary. Thomas Hardy has specific standards which include a negative perspective on marriage and a lonely demeanor. In both Your Last Drive and The Workbox Thomas Hardy was very punctilious when placing each caesura and end stop. In both poems he used the word borough and rhyme to connect each line and produce an everlasting impact on the reader. Whether Thomas Hardy’s purpose for writing poems was an emotional release or to stimulate emotions in the reader, he disregarded any successful marriages and gave purpose to his writings because he went persevered through the relationship
The tone of Brendan Galvin’s poem “An Evel Knievel Elegy” is quickly established by the writer’s use of the word elegy. Elegy is defined to be a sad lyrical poem or song that expresses sorrow for someone who is dead. In this poem the writer chooses to reflect on some of the public events in the life of motorcycle stuntman, Evel Knievel. This free verse poem has no stanzas or rhyme scheme and there is no set rhythm. The poet’s use of the word “We” in the first line implies the speaker and the poet are one in the same.
With that being said, Hardy is pointing out that we should read between the lines. Everything within this poem is an unsaid message. For example, the wife's reaction, the knowledge of John Wayward, the coffin, even Wayward's name is an unsaid message. Those messages clearly point out that the wife cheated on the husband. They also point out the husband knew of the adulterous relationship between his wife and John Wayward and may have had something to do with Wayward's death.
Many authors' literary works are often influenced by their own personal life experiences. Among these authors is Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most inventive writers of prose and poetry in the nineteenth century. The juxtaposition of Poe's life and work is most evident in the morbid personalities and melancholy themes of his literary compositions, similar to those of his life.
The Victorian Era was a time of overseas expansion and domestic reform. During this period of growth and change, there is an upsurge of literary movements and technological advancements that has shaped its culture and brought forth a new direction of prosperity. We are introduced to a number of authors, each of which provides different and unique perceptions through their writing. As we read further into the unit, we start to realize that personal relationships such as love, marriage, and friendship become very important to the Victorians. However, the writers from this period suggest different ideals. Some of these writers express a darker approach, among these is Robert Browning. He is best known as one of the greatest of Victorian poets, and the techniques he learned as a playwright led him to master the dramatic monologue. Dramatic monologues are a way of expressing the views of a character and offering the audience greater insight into that character's feelings. “My Last Duchess” and Porphyria’s Lover” are among Browning’s best dramatic monologues.
of the loss of the old way of life. Hardy went to work in London in
Edgar Allan Poe had a peculiar way with his work. He was adopted early in his life to be spared from poverty and heartache (Roberts and Zweig 226). But in the Big Read it is stated that he still felt a satisfaction from women’s suffering. Poe just wanted to be a writer and followed his passion into judging others work to support himself (Roberts and Zweig 226). Some say that he is selfish and indulgent. Sadly the death of Poe is still a mystery but his works affect people’s lives on a daily basis. The elegance of Poe’s prose invokes an emotional reaction he was subject to during his childhood that later led to the creation of the most influential works of the 19th Century.
Thomas Hardy was writing around from 1870 and gave up novel writing in 1895 after receiving harsh criticism. In those times the laws were very different. For instance women could not vote at all which could have made a difference if they did vote. After Emma died - which was Hardy's first wife he wrote poems that were for her or about her when they were married. Section 2 - Content, Tone and Theme =
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was one of the great writers of the Late Victorian era. One of his great works out of the many that he produced was his poem Hap, which he wrote in 1866, but did not publish until 1898 in his collection of poems called Wessex Poems. This poem seems to typify the sense of alienation that he and other writers were experiencing at the time, as they "saw their times as marked by accelerating social and technological change and by the burden of a worldwide empire" (Longman p. 2165). The poem also reveals Hardy's own "abiding sense of a universe ruled by a blind or hostile fate, a world whose landscapes are etched with traces of the fleeting stories of their inhabitants" (Longman p. 2254).
Relationships Between Men and Women in Thoms Hardy's Short Stories Thomas Hardy was born on June the 2nd, 1848, at Higher Brockhampton in Dorset, a little hamlet, a few miles from Dorchester. He soon moved to London to study architecture, writing poems and short stories in his spare time, eventually moving on to do full-time writing, abandoning architecture. Most of his stories are set in the imagined county of Wessex, which encompasses the counties, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall. His novels and short stories all involved several issues; Victorian relationships and the dynamics of actual relationships between people and Wessex itself.
Hardy uses imagery throughout the novel in order to explicitly define the ways in which life is unjust. This injustice is first displayed at Prince?s death, then again at his burial. Hardy chooses specific words to enable the reader to see exactly what is happing. He describes the mail-cart to be ?speeding along?like an arrow.? He explains that the mail-cart had ?driven into her slow and unlighted equipage,? and now the horse?s ?life?s blood was spouting in a stream and falling with a hiss into the road.? (Hardy 22). The descriptive words, such as ?speeding,? ?arrow,? ?driven,? ?unlighted,? ?spouting,? and ?hiss? allow the reader?s senses to capture the enormity of the situation. This quote also helps the reader to envision the misery of the situation. Tess is only attempting to help her family by bringing the hives to market to draw some income them. Her desire to help her family backfires with Prince?s accidental death, as he was their only form of income. The desperation induced by Prince?s death is shown when Hardy explains that Mr. Durbeyfield worked harder than ever before in digging a grave for Prince. Hardy states that the young girls ?discharged their griefs in loud blares,? and that when Prince was ?tumbled in? the family gathered around the grave (Hardy 24). Hard...
the development of poetry and his voice can still be clearly heard. today in the twenty-first century. His poems from ‘Lyrical Ballads’. in his own words, featuring ‘incidents and situations from common life’. This indisputably incorporates the theme of loss in many of his poems.
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English author who considered himself mainly as a poet. A large part of his work was set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex. In 1898 Hardy published a collection of poems written over 30 years, Wessex Poems his first volume of poetry. Emma Lavinia Gifford, Hardy’s wife, whom he married in 1874. He became alienated from his wife, who died in 1912; her death had a traumatic effect on him. He remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his sorrow by writing poetry, he dictated his final poem to his first wife on his deathbed.
Hardy originated from a working class family. The son of a master mason, Hardy was slightly above that of his agricultural peers. Hardy’s examination of transition between classes is usually similar to that of D.H. Lawrence, that if you step outside your circle you will die. The ambitious lives of the characters within Hardy’s novels like Jude and Tess usually end fatally; as they attempt to break away from the constraints of their class, thus, depicting Hardy’s view upon the transition between classes. Hardy valued lower class morals and traditions, it is apparent through reading Tess that her struggles are evidently permeated through the social sufferings of the working class. A central theme running throughout Hardy’s novels is the decline of old families. It is said Hardy himself traced the Dorset Hardy’s lineage and found once they were of great i...
Clarke, R. (n.d.). The Poetry of Thomas Hardy. rlwclarke. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://www.rlwclarke.net/Courses/LITS2002/2008-2009/12AHardy'sPoetry.pdf
Thomas Hardy was a famous author and poet he lived from 1840 to 1928. During his long life of 88 years he wrote fifteen novels and one thousand poems. He lived for the majority of his life near Dorchester. Hardy got many ideas for his stories while he was growing up. An example of this was that he knew of a lady who had had her blood turned by a convict’s corpse and he used this in the story ‘The Withered Arm’. The existence of witches and witchcraft was accepted in his lifetime and it was not unusual for several people to be killed for crimes of witchcraft every year.