Victorian Realist And Realism In Thomas Hardy's Poetry

Thomas Hardy was born in Stinsford, United Kingdom in 1840. He was born in a country where poetry dominated literature and where arguably some of the great poets lived including William Shakespeare. Most of his poetry got published in the later part of his life. He also wrote many famous novels to support himself financially. Some of his poetry was inspired by his first wife Emma, to whom he paid little attention to while she was alive. His works include regretful elegies inspired by his late wife. His poems have the effect of longing and nostalgia, solidified by odd syntax and diction. His other works are mostly about uncertainty of fate, time and change, and the relationship between man and nature. Hardy was a Victorian realist and he was also inspired by William Wordsworth poetry style of Romanticism. Hardy was a hardcore idealist and realist as he

The reason for the unusual syntax according to Blackmur could be that, “Hardy really lacked the craft of his profession- technique in the wide sense […] may explain what otherwise seems the accident of success or failure.” This is an interesting and a rather incorrect criticism of Hardy’s skills. Blackmur is a noted literary critic and a poet himself who has presented criticism on numerous literary works. However, his criticism of Hardy’s syntax usage is contradictory, considering Hardy’s poems. For instance, in his poem “A Broken Appointment,” Hardy constructs lines that flow and give the reader a sense that Hardy is rather skilled and a rebellious poet: “Of human deeds divine in all but name/ Was it not worth a little hour or more” (12-13). His syntax is different because it is odd. Nonetheless, the syntax still is fluid and quite smooth with its rhyming despite the unusual syntax. However, it is that abnormality of the syntax that evokes a sense of desolation and loneliness in the