The Imperial World-System and Cultures of Dissent in Thomas Hardy's Fiction

Zusatztext

This is the first book-length study of imperial crossings in Thomas Hardys novels and short stories. Combining the strengths of world-literary and world-systems analyses with a cultural materialist approach, the study offers unparalleled coverage of global links in Hardys fiction, engaging, in addition, with a range of dissenting responses - at both formal and thematic registers - to the British world-systems exploitative structures. Hardys prose outputs reveal that the empire, contrary to popular critical assumptions in postcolonial studies, did not harmonise the classes, genders or regions into a shared national imperial identity, culture or destiny. A major component of the study additionally includes comparative readings of the 'modern' world-system and imperial sociality in writings by Joseph Conrad, H. Rider Haggard, Elizabeth Gaskell, Rudyard Kipling, David Livingstone, and in Chartist poetry. The book will be an invaluable resource to teachers, students and enthusiasts working in the field of world literature, and in Victorian, postcolonial and settler colonial studies.

Autorenportrait

Rena Jackson has published primarily in Hardy studies and postcolonial studies. She has taught and trained students at all degree levels at the University of Salford and the University of Manchester, and has introduced sessions on Hardy, imperial migrations and questions of class to sixth formers and on core and optional university modules. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Manchester.   

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