Thomas Hardy and the Comic Muse

There has long been a tendency to regard Thomas Hardy as a great tragic writer and to ignore or underestimate the value of his comic works. This derives no doubt partly from the fact that comedy as an art form has been consistently undervalued ever since Aristotle dealt with it so slightly and so slightingly. It also stems from the evident inability of some readers and critics to allow an artist a wide scope and multiple voices. Thomas Hardy and the Comic Muse discusses the nature of comedy and the various theories that purport to explain or define it, and examines Hardy's works — novels, short stories, and poetry — in terms of the categories of farce, humour, satire, and wit. It looks at where and why Hardy made use of these forms of comedy, what his historical sources were, and why this side of his work has been so frequently neglected. It also looks at what insights might be offered by Hardy — both directly and indirectly — to answer the difficult but always tantalizing question: what is comedy? The two subjects, Hardy and Comedy, are counterpointed throughout so that they prove to be mutually illuminating.

About the Author :
J. K. Lloyd Jones is a Visiting Fellow in English at the Australian National University. She is co-editor of six collections of essays—Words For their Own Sake (2004), An ABC of Lying (2004), Renaissance Perspectives (2006), Art and Time (2007), Art and Authenticity (forthcoming, 2009), and Chaucer's Landscapes and Other Essays by R. W. V. Elliott (forthcoming, 2009)—published by Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne.

Review :
'Most readers of Thomas Hardy, as one of his critics wrote, 'hail him as a great tragic novelist', and there is no doubt of the impact on the reader of the fate of characters like Tess or Jude. But, like Shakespeare, Hardy had an eye and an ear for the comic side of life, for situations or characters which make us smile rather than reach again for a handkerchief. It is the achievement of Jan Lloyd Jones's timely and persuasive study of the comic elements in Hardy's works, that reminds that while Hardy was undoubtedly a great tragic novelist, Wessex is a place where sunshine and laughter also demand our attention and appreciation.'—Ralph W. V. Elliott, Australian National University, author of Hardy's English (Blackwell 1984). "Jan Lloyd-Jones has written a sorely-needed book. We're all much too poker-faced about Hardy, as if Tess, Jude, and the Mayor of Casterbridge were all he wrote. This is an overdue reminder that there is another side to him (even in those books): fresh, lively, funny. And this is itself a fresh and funny book, full of sharp and wry observation, comprehensive, iconoclastic, readable, reaching out even beyond Hardy to broader conceptions of the comic. Highly recommended."—Professor Simon Haines of the English Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, author of Poetry and Philosophy from Homer to Rousseau.