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Overview
This pioneering study is the first detailed exploration of Hardy's linguistic "awkwardness," a subject that has long puzzled critics. Dennis Taylor shows that Hardy's language must be understood as a distinctive response to the philological and literary issues of his time. Deeply influenced by the Victorian historical study of language, Hardy deliberately incorporated into his own writing a sense of language's recent and hidden history, its multiple stages and classes, and its arbitrary motivations. In what is the first major treatment of a writer's relation to the Oxford English Dictionary, Taylor's study also examines the influence on Hardy's language of the founding and development of this period of the OED.
Synopsis
This pioneering study is the first detailed exploration of Hardy's linguistic "awkwardness," a subject that has long puzzled critics. Dennis Taylor shows that Hardy's language must be understood as a distinctive response to the philological and literary issues of his time. Deeply influenced by the Victorian historical study of language, Hardy deliberately incorporated into his own writing a sense of language's recent and hidden history, its multiple stages and classes, and its arbitrary motivations. In what is the first major treatment of a writer's relation to the Oxford English Dictionary, Taylor's study also examines the influence on Hardy's language of the founding and development of this period of the OED.