Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses

Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses is a collection of poems by English poet Thomas Hardy, and was published in 1909. It includes poems of various dates,[1] mainly concerned with rural, familial and provincial life.[2]

Dates and thematics

The collection contains poems of various dates, with almost a third of its 94 poems having been published before the book's publication.[3] A not untypical thematic stress on life's ironies is present,[4] though Hardy himself was insistent that the title phrase was a poetic image only, and not to be taken as a philosophical belief.[5] He also pointed out that behind the "I" of the poems stood not autobiography so much as "dramatic monologues by different characters".[6]

Significant poems

Hardy himself considered "A Trampwoman's Tragedy" the best of all his poems.[7] Gilbert Murray thought "He Abjures Love" had a Horatian quality; and Ezra Pound saw "The Revisitation" as anticipating Hardy's Poems 1912-13.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ D. Wright ed., Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems (Penguin 1978) p. 442
  2. ^ I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1993) p. 943
  3. ^ N. Wenborn, Reading Thomas Hardy (2012) p. 52
  4. ^ I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1993) p. 943
  5. ^ T. & F. Hardy, Thomas Hardy (Ware 2007) p. 419-20
  6. ^ D. Wright ed., Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems (Penguin 1978) p. 442
  7. ^ I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1993) p. 943
  8. ^ M. Seymour-Smith, Thomas Hardy (London 1994) p. 307 and p. 682


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