Hardy, Conrad and the Senses
- Offers the first book-length study of connections between these two major authors bringing new approaches to bear on often-taught works
- Provides an understanding of impressionist styles of writing that is drawn from contemporary empirical science
- Tells a progressive chronological story of both authors’ use of the senses in their fiction
- Argues for a distinctive place for Hardy and Conrad in late-Victorian fiction which challenges the narrative of a modernist rupture with Victorian realism
- Supported by wide reading in nineteenth-century science and letters, and comprehensive knowledge of twentieth century criticism of the two novelists
This book reads the highly descriptive impressionist writings of Hardy and Conrad together in the light of a shared attention to sight and sound. With a focus on nature and the environment, Hugh Epstein analyses thirteen of these powerful works in the historical company of contemporary discussions in Victorian science. He takes them beyond their ‘Victorian’ and ‘Modernist’ labels to show how vivid and urgent these novels are for the modern reader.
Introduction
1. The Physiology of Sensation and Literary Style: Desperate Remedies and The Rescue
2. Facing Nature
3. The Visible WorldFiction and Physics: Appearances in the Light – Far From the Madding Crowd and Lord JimSearching Space: A Laodicean and ‘The End of the Tether’
4. An Audible WorldSonic Imaging: The Return of the Native and ‘Heart of Darkness’The Sound of History: Nostromo
5. Identity and MarginInspection, Immersion: The Mayor of CasterbridgeWidening Margins: Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Nostromo
6. Minding the SensesJude the Obscure and Under Western Eyes
PostscriptBibliographyIndex
Hardy, Conrad and the Senses raises the bar for anyone writing about either of these two authors; for anyone writing about both, it will be the touchstone of quality for some time.
Prose, wrote Arthur Symons, ‘listens at the doors of all the senses’. Reading the fiction of Hardy and Conrad alongside the work of nineteenth-century physical scientists, Hugh Epstein shows in fascinating detail how their prose listens, and what it hears. This is a book that will both excite and reward readers of either novelist.
