En chair et en os ? Sens, sensations et sensationnalisme dans Desperate Remedies (1871) de Thomas Hardy
Desperate Remedies, Thomas Hardy’s first novel, published under a pseudonym, is often regarded as a sensation novel. In the 1870s, though the literary genre was no longer as popular as it had been a decade before, resorting to sensational motifs and plot-patterns was still a significant means to for...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2007-03-01
|
| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/cve/10669 |
| Summary: | Desperate Remedies, Thomas Hardy’s first novel, published under a pseudonym, is often regarded as a sensation novel. In the 1870s, though the literary genre was no longer as popular as it had been a decade before, resorting to sensational motifs and plot-patterns was still a significant means to foreground a modern world marked by capitalism, progress and urbanization. Moreover, the genre’s constant play upon bodies—whether the bodies of the characters or those of its readers—typified its close relationship with modernity. Sensation fiction was more often than not haunted by anxious, neurasthenic or even insane characters, as though they were nervously exhausted by their stimulating and stressful modern society. This paper explores how Thomas Hardy reworks the literary conventions of the sensation novel in Desperate Remedies. Featuring an illegitimate child, a husband suspected of bigamy, drugs, poisons and characters hiding beneath deceitful appearances, Desperate Remedies revisits Victorian sensationalism and investigates sensations and the senses in a brand new way. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |