How to Read Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
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0:00 why I love Thomas Hardy
2:00 how to read Far from the Madding Crowd
3:00 what is this story about?
5:30 allusions in great literature
6:30 where does the title come from?
7:30 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
8:30 what is an elegy in poetry?
10:00 poetry reading assignment for Hardy
11:30 appreciating Thomas Gray’s poem
13:00 Thomas Hardy as poet-novelist
14:00 influence of impressionism on Hardy
15:00 how do we define great literature?
15:30 artistic love languages of writers
16:30 the rise of the novel reading public
17:30 how the Victorians read fiction
18:00 novel as popular entertainment
19:00 a turning point in Hardy’s career
20:00 poetic tradition in English literature
21:00 Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth
22:00 two broad religious poetic traditions
23:00 two traditions of great novels
24:00 Thomas Hardy as tragic novelist
25:00 my first Thomas Hardy novel
26:00 how Hardy wrote this novel
27:00 Shakespeare & Milton in Hardy
28:00 influence of William Wordsworth
28:30 an exciting reading experiment
29:00 aesthetic manifesto of Lyrical Ballads
30:30 Romantic influence on Thomas Hardy
31:30 Hardy takes us into the heart of nature
32:00 the sense of a lost idyllic past
33:00 industrialisation & class anxiety
34:30 appreciating a great Wordsworth poem
35:30 my theory on the mythology of Eden
36:00 the suffering of Hardy’s characters
38:00 Romantic vs Darwinian nature
39:00 the many meanings of romance
40:30 tension of romance vs realism
41:00 complex women characters
42:00 Thomas Hardy’s relationships
42:30 how Victorians named characters
43:30 the protagonists in this novel
44:00 the character of Gabriel Oak
45:30 the character of Bathsheba Everdene
48:00 Sergeant Troy & Farmer Boldwood
49:00 Thomas Hardy’s place names
50:00 on flat vs round characters
51:00 sublime subtlety in characterisation
52:30 Victorian critics vs Thomas Hardy
54:00 Victorian male conceptions of women
55:00 ‘they can’t make up their minds’
57:00 learning from vicarious experience
58:30 Hardy defies gender conventions
1:01:00 when Gabriel proposes to Bathsheba
1:02:00 ‘I want somebody to tame me’
1:03:00 Hardy’s critique of marriage
1:04:00 entering the age of the New Woman
1:05:00 were the Victorians really repressed?
1:07:00 what we want vs what we need
1:08:00 the tragic war between the sexes
1:09:00 from Victorianism to Modernism
1:10:00 Virginia Woolf tribute for Hardy
1:12:00 Hardy as greatest tragic novelist
1:15:00 man up against the natural world
1:16:00 living in Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
1:18:30 appreciating my favourite passage
1:21:30 Thomas Hardy lecture series
1:22:00 embracing first reading experience
1:23:00 chapter reading assignments
1:25:00 some reading questions for you