Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Acknowledgments vii
4. Introduction ix
5. 1. The Gospel According to Hardy 1
6. 2. ‘My Scripture Manner’: Reading Hardy’s Biblical and Liturgical Allusion 20
7. 3. Hardy and Hamlet 38
8. 4. Literary Allusion: Hardy and Other Poets 55
9. 5. Hardy’s Subterranean Child 78
10. 6. Written in Stone: Hardy’s Grotesque Sublime 96
11. 7. The Erotics of Dress in A Pair of Blue Eyes 118
12. 8. Hardy’s Rural Painting of the Dutch School 136
13. 9. Individual and Community in The Return of the Native: A Reappraisal 154
14. 10. The Woodlanders and the Darwinian Grotesque 174
15. 11. Plato and the Love Goddess: Paganism in Two Versions of The Well-Beloved 199
16. 12. Aesthetics and Thematics in Hardy’s Volumes of Verse: The Example of Time’s Laughingstocks 219
17. 13. Hardy and the Battle God 245
18. 14. Opening Time: Hardy’s Poetic Thresholds 262
19. 15. Thomas Hardy and the Powyses 270
20. Selected Checklist of Hardy-Related Publications by Michael Millgate 287
21. Notes on Contributors 291
22. Index 297