Abstract
The languages of Wessex are properly those which Hardy used to convey the concept in all its various forms to his readers. However, this is not the place to begin an investigation of the Englishes Hardy’s successive narrators employ, and the focus here will be on ‘the Wessex tongue’, as one of them calls it in Jude the Obscure. Nevertheless, it is worth at least drawing initial attention to the contrasts that everyone feels between the native speakers of Wessex and the literary dialects of those narrators who present them — a contrast that is in itself part of that country-city divide which is a driving force behind the creation and continuing development of Wessex.1
Keywords
Good Word Local Speech Dialectal Form Manuscript Page Person Singular Pronoun
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes
- 1.There have been a number of excellent studies of Hardy’s use of dialect, some far more exhaustive than this chapter: Dennis Taylor, Hardy’s Literary Language and Victorian Philology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) — a wonderful book;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Ulla Baugner, A Study of the Use of Dialect in Thomas Hardy’s Novels and Short Stories (Stockholm Theses in English No 7, Stockholm University 1972);Google Scholar
- Ralph Elliott, Thomas Hardy’s English (Oxford 1984);Google Scholar
- Patricia Ingham, ‘Thomas Hardy and the Dorset Dialect’ in Five Hundred Years of Words and Sounds ed E G Stanley and D Gray (Cambridge 1983)Google Scholar
- and ‘Dialect in the Novels of Hardy and George Eliot’ in Literary English Since Shakespeare ed George Watson (Oxford 1970).Google Scholar
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© Simon Gatrell 2003