The LRB Podcast

Thomas Hardy's Medieval Mind

Apr 25, 2023

50:44

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Episode notes

Introduction

4min

The Early Life and Architecture of Thomas Hardy

2min

The Victorian Gothic

3min

The Freedom of Gothic Architecture

5min

The Story of Tintangel

2min

The Court of King Arthur's Castle, a Romance of Leonice

3min

The Elopement of Emma

2min

A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Preface

3min

The Free-Spiritedness of Elfride Bathsheber

2min

10.

The Struggle of Elfride

3min

11.

The Death of Jemima Hardy

3min

12.

The Romance of the Rose

3min

13.

Far From the Mading Crowd by Henry Hardy

5min

14.

The Wasteland and Ulysses by William Hardy

4min

15.

The Language of Hardy

4min

16.

The White Handed and the Death of Hardy

3min

Two worlds collide in this Close Readings fusion episode in which Mary Wellesley talks to Mark Ford about the medieval in Thomas Hardy and the wider Victorian imagination. They discuss why Hardy liked to present himself as an Arthurian knight, his satirisation of the chivalric ideal in his novel A Pair of Blue Eyes, and the way his training as an architect influenced his devotion to poetic spontaneity and experimentation.

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