Thomas Hardy and the Survivals of Time

A systematic exploration of Thomas Hardy's imaginative assimilation of particular Victorian sciences, this study draws on and swells the widening current of scholarly attention now being paid to the cultural meanings compacted and released by the nascent sciences of man in the nineteenth century. Combining literary close readings with broad historical analyses, Radford explores Hardy's artistic response to geological, archaeological and anthropological findings. In particular, he analyzes Hardy's lifelong fascination with the doctrine of survivals, a term coined by E.B. Tylor in Primitive Culture (1871) to denote customs, beliefs and practices persisting in isolation from their original cultural context. His readings of Hardy's literary notebooks disclose the degree to which Hardy's own considerable scientific knowledge was shaped by the middlebrow periodical press. Thus the book raises questions not only about the reception of scientific ideas but also the creation of nonspecialist forms of scientific discourse, and represents a genuinely new perspective for Hardy studies.

Andrew Radford is a Lecturer in English and American Studies at the University of Durham.