| Archive for literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org Literature, Poetry, Essays, Dialogues, Philosophy, Theology |
| Sitaram |
Hardy's Manuscripthttp://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/intro.htmHutton was looking for enlightenment, or what Victorians would have called edification. And if Hardy's dissident moral universe did not always provide this particular philosophical comfort, his abundant array of literary, classical and biblical allusions almost certainly did. These were "high intellectual treats" indeed. Invariably thought-provoking, frequently ironised, and often delightfully picturesque, it was not necessarily the aptness of the allusion or the brilliance of the literary analogue so much as its familiarity as part of a shared cultural heritage which excited the interest and pleasure of Victorian readers. The more esoteric the allusion, the more intense the reader's bright moment of recognition; the more ironic the implications, the greater the reader's satisfaction and pleasure -- even the unschooled were familiar with bible stories and classical mythology. Therefore, at a very fundamental level of cultural familiarity, when Cainy Ball's "pore mother" -- being neither a "Scripture-read woman" nor a churchgoer -- makes a mistake at his christening and wrongly names her infant son "Cain" because she had thought "t'was Abel killed Cain" (from the Genesis story, 4:1-15), Hardy's readers would have been thoroughly entertained. Humour depends very largely upon an audience's sense of its own prior knowledge. |