Thomas Hardy

Broschiertes Buch

A Laodicean

A Story of To-day

Beschreibung

A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of To-Day is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1880-81 in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The plot exhibits devices uncommon in Hardy's other fiction, such as falsified telegrams and faked photographs. Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who had purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. Somerset represents modernity in the novel. In the village there is an amateur photographer, William Dare, the illegitimate son of Captain De Stancy, an impoverished scion of that family. Captain De Stancy represents to Paula the notion of medieval nobility. She is attracted to each man for his respectively different virtues. William Dare, bastard and unrecognised son of Captain de Stancy, and a thorough wastrel, decides to intervene to promote his father in her affections (solely so that he, Wade, can continue to gamble and live off Paula's income). He fakes a telegram and a photograph to make it appear that Somerset is leading a dissolute lifestyle as a drunken gambler. His subterfuge is discovered by Captain De Stancy's sister Charlotte who has befriended Paula. She decides to tell Paula the truth and Paula pursues Somerset to the continent where he has gone mistakenly believing Paula and the Captain to have been married. She finds him and they are reunited and marry. In revenge, Wade burns down the castle using his family's portraits and furniture as kindling; Somerset proposes to build a modern house in its place. The last line has Paula summing up her dichotomy of mind between modernity and romantic medievalism, and thus the two men, also emphasising the title "a Laodicean" (someone indifferent or half-hearted) - "I wish my castle wasn't burnt; and I wish you were a De Stancy!" The usage of "Laodicean" to mean someone lacking commitment comes from a reference in the New Testament: To the angel of the church in Laodicaea write: - "These are the words of the Unchanging One, 'the witness faithful and true, the beginning of the Creation of God': -I know your life; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. If only you were either cold or hot! But now, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth." -¿Revelation 3:14-16 OEB (wikipedia.org)

Autor

Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 - 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin. Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in the top 50 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bibliotech Press
• Seitenzahl: 270
• Erscheinungstermin: 16. September 2022
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 16mm
• Gewicht: 443g
• ISBN-13: 9781636379425
• ISBN-10: 1636379427
• Artikelnr.: 65847461