Thomas Hardy’s Betraying Heart: Realism and Bodily Affect

Doug Battersby

Thomas Hardy’s Betraying Heart: Realism and Bodily Affect

Doug Battersby

Department of English

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review

8 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This article examines how Thomas Hardy’s fiction turns to the heart as a privileged figure for grappling with one of the great philosophical challenges of the novel form: how to put the corporeality of emotional experience into words? It contextualizes Hardy’s cardiac poetics in relation to historical and contemporary scientific and medical understandings of bodily affect. The conclusion argues that Hardy’s heart-centred strategies of affective description can at once illuminate his uneasy relationship with realism’s normative operations and pluralise critical
understanding of realism and its characteristic methods for dramatizing philosophical accounts of human experience.

Original language	English
Journal	ELH: English Literary History
Publication status	Accepted/In press - 1 Aug 2023

Bibliographical note

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101023501.

Access to Document

Full-text PDF (accepted author manuscript)
This is the accepted author manuscript (AAM). The final published version (version of record) is available online via Johns Hopkins University Press at [insert hyperlink]. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.
Accepted author manuscript, 296 KB

Handle.net

Persistent link

The Novel and the Heart: 1840-1940
Battersby, D. (Principal Investigator)
1/09/21 → 31/08/24
Project: Research

Cite this

@article{47a43d20f1fd432fb6836de10249e3c9,

title = "Thomas Hardy{\textquoteright}s Betraying Heart: Realism and Bodily Affect",

abstract = "This article examines how Thomas Hardy{\textquoteright}s fiction turns to the heart as a privileged figure for grappling with one of the great philosophical challenges of the novel form: how to put the corporeality of emotional experience into words? It contextualizes Hardy{\textquoteright}s cardiac poetics in relation to historical and contemporary scientific and medical understandings of bodily affect. The conclusion argues that Hardy{\textquoteright}s heart-centred strategies of affective description can at once illuminate his uneasy relationship with realism{\textquoteright}s normative operations and pluralise criticalunderstanding of realism and its characteristic methods for dramatizing philosophical accounts of human experience. ",

author = "Doug Battersby",

note = "This project has received funding from the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk{\l}odowska-Curie grant agreement No 101023501.",

year = "2023",

month = aug,

day = "1",

language = "English",

journal = "ELH: English Literary History",

issn = "0013-8304",

publisher = "Johns Hopkins University Press",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Thomas Hardy’s Betraying Heart: Realism and Bodily Affect

AU - Battersby, Doug

N1 - This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101023501.

PY - 2023/8/1

Y1 - 2023/8/1

N2 - This article examines how Thomas Hardy’s fiction turns to the heart as a privileged figure for grappling with one of the great philosophical challenges of the novel form: how to put the corporeality of emotional experience into words? It contextualizes Hardy’s cardiac poetics in relation to historical and contemporary scientific and medical understandings of bodily affect. The conclusion argues that Hardy’s heart-centred strategies of affective description can at once illuminate his uneasy relationship with realism’s normative operations and pluralise criticalunderstanding of realism and its characteristic methods for dramatizing philosophical accounts of human experience.

AB - This article examines how Thomas Hardy’s fiction turns to the heart as a privileged figure for grappling with one of the great philosophical challenges of the novel form: how to put the corporeality of emotional experience into words? It contextualizes Hardy’s cardiac poetics in relation to historical and contemporary scientific and medical understandings of bodily affect. The conclusion argues that Hardy’s heart-centred strategies of affective description can at once illuminate his uneasy relationship with realism’s normative operations and pluralise criticalunderstanding of realism and its characteristic methods for dramatizing philosophical accounts of human experience.

M3 - Article (Academic Journal)

SN - 0013-8304

JO - ELH: English Literary History

JF - ELH: English Literary History

ER -

Thomas Hardy’s Betraying Heart: Realism and Bodily Affect

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Access to Document

Handle.net

Fingerprint

Projects

The Novel and the Heart: 1840-1940

Cite this