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Explores 'scenic realism' in the major novels of Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad
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 re-frames their 'Victorian' and 'Modernist' labels to show how vivid and urgent these novels are for the modern reader.
Hugh Epstein is the Secretary of the Joseph Conrad Society.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. The Physiology of Sensation and Literary Style; Desperate Remedies and The Rescue; 2. Facing Nature; 3. The Visible World; i. Fiction and Physics: Appearances in the Light; Far From the Madding Crowd and Lord Jim; ii. Searching Space; A Laodicean and 'The End of the Tether'; 4. An Audible World; i. Sonic Imaging; The Return of the Native and 'Heart of Darkness'; ii. The Sound of History; Nostromo; 5. Identity and Margin; i. Inspection, Immersion, The Mayor of Casterbridge; ii. Widening Margins; Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Nostromo; 6. Minding the Senses; Jude the Obscure and Under Western Eyes; Postscript; Bibliography.
About the author
Dr Hugh Epstein is a retired college lecturer and the current Secretary of the Joseph Conrad Society. His most recent publications include
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo, Critical Introduction and Notes for the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad, (C.U.P., commissioned and forthcoming), 'Conrad and Nature, 1900-1904', in Conrad and Nature, (Routledge, 2018), and 'A Transmissive Medium: Atmosphere in Hardy's Novels', The Thomas Hardy Journal XXXII (Autumn 2016), 11-28.
Summary
This book readsthe highly descriptive impressionist writings of Hardy and Conrad together in the light of a shared attention to sight and sound.
