Representations of culture : Thomas Hardy's Wessex & Victorian anthropology
A "Representations of Culture places Thomas Hardy's Wessex - his fictional representation of rural England - within the framework of anthropology, an emergent discipline at the time. Informed by both intellectual biography and close textual readings, this book argues that Hardy's lifelong interests in folklore, customs, local history, myth, archaeology, and communal narrative history represent the most "modern" (rather than simply traditional) aspect of his thinking - the ways in which anthropological viewpoints associated with Tylor, Lang, and Frazer shaped his understanding and representation of Wessex."--Book cover
154 pages ; 24 cm
9780820488141, 0820488143
70335232
Introduction: Thomas Hardy, Wessex, and the critics
The science of culture : anthropology and the creation of Wessex
Beginnings : descriptions of local culture
Wessex past and present : primitive and modern in The return of the native
An experiment in tragic form : anthropological ritual and symbolic representation in Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Beyond myth : the presence of the past in Jude the obscure