Thomas Hardy: Imagining Imagination in Hardy's Poetry and Fiction

The author of this text offers close readings of Thomas Hardy's poetry and novels, regarding these as expressive forms for the discovery of everyday and professional acts of imagination. The themes and forms examined here include narrative, conversation, gossip, memory, gender, poetry of place and imaginative threshold. Altogether the study is a contribution to theories of reflexivity, expanding and revising some of the analysis provided by Professor Hardy in "The Appropriate Form" and "Tellers and Listeners".