THOMAS HARDY & THE ACHES OF MODERNISM THROUGH NICK LACEY’S ‘REPERTOIRE OF ELEMENTS’
THOMAS HARDY & THE ACHES OF MODERNISM THROUGH NICK LACEY’S ‘REPERTOIRE OF ELEMENTS’

Summary/Abstract: Written in a time of significant transformation and undoubtedly with “a hidden agenda”, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, this pastoral Victorian tragedy, depicts Thomas Hardy’s vision of life and philosophy in a society “slave to custom and conventionality” (Ch. 39, p. 232) that encourages the audience to move forward and glance towards the future. By following the framework suggested by Nick Lacy (1998) who interprets genres as dynamic and changing over time, we are trying here to identify the valuable ‘repertoire of elements’ which breaks down the text into five distinct areas: history, characters, setting, iconography, narrative and theme, and style. The purpose of this approach within the frame of contemporary genre theory is to reveal both the modernity and the feminist view taken by Thomas Hardy in his novel ‘Tess of the D’Urberville’, despite the tribulation caused by many types of censorship the author had to face due to the Puritan voices of editors, publishers and the legal apparatus existing in the British Empire in its full bloom. In the author’s explanatory note to the first edition, Thomas Hardy wrote in response to the harsh voices of the Victorian age: “I will just add that the story is sent out in all sincerity of purpose, as an attempt to give artistic form to a true sequence of things…”

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