Swaab, P.;
(2024)
Hardy, Warner and ‘Life’s Little Ironies’.
The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society
, 24
(1)
pp. 166-177.
10.14324/STW.24.1.12.
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Abstract
This article is a revised version of a talk given at the ‘Study Weekend’ on Thomas Hardy and Sylvia Townsend Warner held in Dorchester in February 2024. It compares the two writers as ironists, focusing especially on Hardy’s collection of short stories Life’s Little Ironies. It explores the use of titles by both authors and their deployment of what Auden called a ‘hawk’s vision’ of narrative situations. The article ends by comparing the writers’ treatments of sexuality and coincidence. It argues that Warner’s sense of the human world is no less ironic than Hardy’s but that her prevailing tone is less tragic and more celebratory, and that the heart of her writing lies in a relish for ‘the oddness of the world and the surprisingness of mankind’.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Hardy, Warner and ‘Life’s Little Ironies’ |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/STW.24.1.12 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/STW.24.1.12 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024, Peter Swaab. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Townsend Warner, irony, Life’s Little Ironies, The Corner That Held Them |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of English Lang and Literature |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215432 |
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