Focusing on narrative structure, irony, satire and allusion, The Hidden Hardy offers a radical new perspective on Thomas Hardy's novels. The respectable and acceptable surfaces are the impostures, masking hidden texts which are extremely hostile to established social, economic and cultural structures.
Acknowledgements - Introduction: Hardy and the Conjurors - Desperate Remedies (1871): Making the Trojan Horse - Far from the Madding Crowd (1874): Priapus in Arcadia - The Hand of Ethelberta (1875): The Writer's Contract - The Return of the Native (1878): Anarchy and Tragedy - A Laodicean (1881): The End of Laodiceanism - The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886): Civilisation and the Field - The Woodlanders (1887): Growth and Self-Destruction - Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891): Reformation or G tterd mmerung? - Jude the Obscure (1895): The Ultimate Satire - Afterword - Index
