At an Inn

“Thomas Hardy’s Poetry and International Modernism” by David N. Wells (2014)

This study explores Hardy as a transitional figure. Because of his long career, his work draws on both Romanticism, which had begun to wane, and the rising energy of Modernism. The article touches on how Hardy’s formal experiments and his bleak themes reflect Modernism, but how he can never entirely abandon his Victorian faith in the operation of absolutes. In this way, Hardy defies categorization.

“Poetry and the Fiddler’s Foot: Meter in Thomas Hardy’s Work” by Vilma Raskin Porter (1979)

This article draws on Hardy’s own connections to music and his childhood in the music-rich world of Dorset and reveals the subtle sonic effects in what otherwise might seem conventional lines of poetry. The article focuses on Hardy’s use of slant rhyme, his use of alliteration, and his experimenting with mixed beats.

“Thomas Hardy and Florence Henniker: The Writing of ‘The Spectre of the Real’” by Richard L. Purdy (1944)

This article offers a comprehensive overview, using Hardy’s letters, of the relationship between Hardy and Henniker, which forms the biographical context for the poem. This article focuses specifically on the short story collaboration between the two. The article describes the intense collaborative process, which was the occasion for the meeting at the inn, as a kind of sublimation of their emotional attraction for each other.

“Hardy, Frost, and the Question of Modernist Poetry” by Robert Langbaum (1982)

The article suggests significant parallels between Hardy and Frost. In comparing the two poets’ long and productive careers, the article sees both poets as Romantics (or Transcendentalists, in the case of the American Frost) at heart, but Modernists in their intellectual argument, leaving them both in an existential loneliness.