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Fallen Wessex: Hardy's Subversion of Milton's Paradise Lost

Literature & Arts
4.8 out of 5 Average rating

Being able to pick and choose activities and either attend at the specified time or watch a recording later suits me perfectly.

Susan
, reviewed on 10 Oct 2022

Entertaining and instructive presentations by knowledgeable speakers.

Margaret
, reviewed on 18 Nov 2022
  • DURATION 1 hr
  • HOW TO ATTEND Attendance is live via Zoom
4.8 out of 5 Average rating

Being able to pick and choose activities and either attend at the specified time or watch a recording later suits me perfectly.

Susan
, reviewed on 10 Oct 2022

Entertaining and instructive presentations by knowledgeable speakers.

Margaret
, reviewed on 18 Nov 2022

Event Description

John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) is a central monument in British literary history and was considered the canonical text by Victorian scholars. For Thomas Addison the poem is 'universal' in its scope and 'useful' for teaching 'the great moral of obedience'. Eve damned all women as weak and vain creatures through her succumbing to temptation: it was Eve's 'fall' that corrupted Adam, and by extension, all of mankind. Milton represented the convention of silencing Eve within male-authored texts, until Thomas Hardy subverted the ethos of the 'fall' through three particular novels - Far From the Madding Crowd, The Woodlanders and Jude the Obscure. Hardy proposes not one but two Eve figures - the tempter and the punished - for each Adam and these figures are not gender-specific. Through the 'Eve complex', Hardy provided an alternative reading of the foundation myth which challenged contemporary gender conventions.

  • Duration: 1 hr
  • Online Zoom event: Join from your computer, phone or tablet (no replay available)
Tracy Hayes.jpg

Meet the Host, Tracy Hayes

Tracy Hayes received her PhD in 2017 with a thesis investigating masculinity in the novels of Thomas Hardy. She is the Secretary and Website/Social Media Director for the Thomas Hardy Society and regularly organizes conferences and study days. Having presented papers on Hardy, M.R. James and Edgar Allan Poe at numerous conferences throughout the UK, Dr Hayes has also published in various journals including the DNHAS ProceedingsPalgrave CommunicationsRRRMerry Meet, the Victorian Popular Fiction Association journal and Short Fiction Studies, and she has contributed chapters to various collections on Hardy, Relationships, the Brontës, Poe and the Gothic. Her current research centres around representations of Gothic masculinity in the short stories of Poe, Hardy and M.R. James.

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