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Overview
This new study offers an original approach to Hardy's art as a novelist and entirely new readings of certain musical scenes in Hardy's works. Asquith utilizes original archival research (both scientific and musicological), which will be of use to all Hardy scholars, and discusses a range of Hardy's major works in relation to musical metaphors--from early fiction to later major works.
Synopsis
Hardy's pastoral settings and reflections of popular sentiments of his time would seem to ban him from metaphysics, if not music. In fact he was concerned his work would be taken as strictly rural and so conducted readings for the intelligentsia and the otherwise interested in which he explained his themes and tropes in terms of the intellectual hot buttons of the day, including evolution, predestination, mesmerism, and musical aesthetics. Enthusiast Asquith uses Hardy's notebooks as well as contemporary reactions to his musical events, discussions about metaphysical evolution, aspects of speech theory, music and the birth (and symbolic death) of consciousness. The bibliography is particularly helpful. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR