Visual Imagination and the Mediation of Semiosis: Intertext and the Real in Thomas Hardy’s Jude...

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836September 2012, Vol. 2, No. 9,

Visual Imagination and the Mediation ofSemiosis: Intertext and the Real in Thomas

Hardy’s Jude the Obscure

Marta Rabikowska University of East London, London, UK

The writing of Thomas Hardy cannot be readily defined as an embodiment ofthe Realistic tradition. His too-liminal status as the last Victoriannovelist, regional writer, and a collector of English rustics, has beenvivaciously debated and contested (Miller, 1970; Widdowson, 1989; Moore,1990; Morgan, 1992; Armstrong, 2000; Mallet, 2002; Nemesvari, 2011). Thisargument contributes to the debate on the relation between the real and thetextual in Hardy’s last novel, Jude the Obscure (1895), which shows thatHardy’s language has features of a self-referential novel, close to theantimimetic poetics of postmodernist genres, which insists, however, on theconnection with the real, where lies the inspiration for creativity andpolitical intervention. Through the analysis of the allegorical figures of“intertexts” interwoven in the language of the novel, it will be argued thatthe representation of the novel registers the connection between Hardy’svisual imagination and his intention to intervene in a discursive field.

Keywords: Thomas Hardy, self-referentiality, intertextuality, mimesis, visualimagination

Introduction A debate over whether Thomas Hardy’s novel can be situated within the

tradition of Realism and its heritage of the mimetic approach toliterature has been invigorating the analysis of his poetics, language,narration, and style since the 19th century, and still inspires newresearch. In the author’s study of the problem, the author question hiswidely appreciated mimetic approach to the real, while arguing that the

Marta Rabikowska, Dr., senior lecturer in media and advertising, School of Arts anDigital Industries, University of East London.

DAVID PUBLISHINGD

VISUAL IMAGINATION AND THE MEDIATION OF SEMIOSIS

language of his last novel, Jude the Obscure (1895), reveals his metatextualawareness and his distrustful attitude towards representation. Byemphasizing the semantic parallels between the metatextuality of quotationand the semiosis of self-referentiality, the author intends to demonstratehow mimesis is invoked and simultaneously challenged, thus giving rise tothe metatextual, postmodern dimensions of the novel.

As a point of departure, it is important to emphasize that Hardy did notapprove the definition of Realism propagated by the French objectivists,such as Stendhal, Balzac, Zola, or Taine. He wrote in his article “TheScience of Fiction” (1967):

Realism is an unfortunate, an ambiguous word, which has been taken up byliterary society like a view-halloo, and has been assumed in some places to meancopyism, and in others pruriency, and has led to two classes of delineators beingincluded in one condemnation. (p. 136)

Just as bad a word is one used to express a consequence of thisdevelopment, namely “brutality”, a term which, first applied by Frenchcritics, has since spread over the English school like the other. It aptlyhits off the immediate impression of the thing meant, but has thedisadvantage of defining impartiality as a passion, and a plan as acaprice. It certainly is very far from truly expressing the aims andmethods of conscientious and well-intentioned authors who, notwithstandingtheir excess, errors, and rickety theories, attempt to narrate the véritévraie (Hardy, 1967, p. 136).

The art of fiction for the author of Jude the Obscure is a matter of style.Yet it is not enough to be able to count objects in reality and describethem with photographic accuracy; it is not sufficient to be an objectivistwith sensitive sight instigating works on “social minutiae” (for whichHardy reproached Taine), as such treatments leads to a description of“life garniture and not life” (Hardy, 1967, p. 119). The author consideredthis kind of literary production to be merely feeding average appetites,neglecting the potential of artistic expression. The critical Realism ofthe 1880s and its new branch, naturalism—called by Hardy “brutality”—waslacking the passion and subjectivism he considered to be the veryfoundation of any creative act.

Hardy uses language to tell mimetically reliable stories which on anallegorical level disrupt the validity of Realism. His language is stillcapable of communicating the world in realistic terms, but it does notnecessarily conform to 19th-century Realism. As Mary Rimmer (2000) put it

2


in her analysis of allusions in Hardy’s writing: “Hardy was workingagainst the grain of nineteenth-century realism even while he produced it”(p. 62). For Hardy, it is not possible to reach reality beyond conventionswhich determine both the experience of reality and its representation.Jude’s texture designates the author’s very specific attitude to reality,which in return affects his poetics. He claimed that, in order to beunderstood as a representation of the real, literature must be presented as“more truthful than truth” (Hardy, 1967, p. 134). Rimmer (2000) explainedthis specific amalgamate: “Hardy himself seems to have seen no absolutedivide between the lived and the learned, the rural and the urban, theoral and the written” (p. 60). This observation elucidates the twofoldrole of allegorical intertexts in Jude, which are treated as both textualand factual artefacts.

In Jude, Hardy unveils his understanding of the mediative character ofliterary articulation and interpretation, and constructs an allegoricalpicture of the artistic and socio-ideological metanarratives of 19th-century society. As Ramón Saldívar (2000) observed, intertexts in Jude informthe realistic plot, but they also deconstruct it on a metatextual level:

Just as language is constituted through repetitions, so does Jude’s lifeacquire a narratable consistency. But the symbolic “inscription” of Jude’sdesires upon the surface of Wessex as he travels its roads from Christminster toShaston, to Aldbrickham and back again, constitutes only provisional creation ofmeaning through a process of deferment. (pp. 37-38)

This “process of deferment”, the author argues, aims to reveal thefutility of both Jude’s ambitions and the mimetic language which buildshis story. However, this is not conveyed directly through anti-mimeticpoetics, but rather through allegory, which rests on the imitation ofmimetic gestures derived from other texts. Yet it is precisely thistechnique of imitating imitation that deprives representation of its moraland ontological validity.

Hardy’s critical approach is articulated through a dialogical narrationthat conveys overt, material, iconographic intertexts, quotations,literary allusions, and symbolic images of imitation, signifying themediative nature of representation. In the argument below, the author willanalyze only two types of intertext which Hardy applies in Jude asallegories of the real: iconographic signs in the text, entitled “icons”,and fabulatory images of the “copy of the original”, namely, photographs,city models, and figurines of Venus, grouped under the two categories

3


“copies” and “ideals”. They all symbolize the mediative character ofrepresentation and the futility of the search for the original, yet at thesame time they stand for the irresistible passion for this search, soacutely articulated in The Well-Beloved (1892).

Argument It has been expertly argued, in a plethora of studies of Hardy’s oeuvre

that throughout his life the writer was deeply engaged with the physical,sensual, and visual materiality of life. In its every shape reality wasappealing to Hardy, as many critics have noted (Holloway, 1953; Paterson,1960; Brooks, 1971; Millgate, 1971; Pinion, 1977, 1990), and nature inparticular was his inspiration. Particularly in his rustic “novels ofcharacters and environment”,1 we come across picturesque and vigorousdescriptions of folklife,2 details of the rural environment,3 andanthropomorphized images of the rude substance of nature.4 Hardy’spictorialism is praised and widely discussed (Smart, 1961; Scott, 1965;Tanner, 1991(1975); Berger, 1990), and is often compared to George Eliot’sverbal drawings (Berger, 1990; Chapman, 1990; Byerly, 1997; Maxwell, 2002)or Wilkie Collins’s narrative painting techniques (Pinion, 1990, p. 24).D. H. Lawrence, who saw in Hardy an extraordinary understanding of nature,particularly appreciated this aspect of Hardy’s art. As Paterson (1977)wrote, for both Hardy and Lawrence:

To define reality as a function of the merely human and social was to defineit as ordinary and commonplace. But to define it as a function of a naturaluniverse independent of and infinitely greater than the human creature and hiscities and societies was to define it as the continuing repository of marvel andmagic. (p. 456)

1 In his General Preface to the Novels and Poems (Wessex Edition, I, 1912), Hardy divides hisnovels into three groups: “The first group is called ‘Novels of Character andEnvironment’, and contains those which approach most nearly to uninfluenced works; alsoone or two which, whatever their quality in some few of their episodes, may claim averisimilitude in general treatment and detail. The second group is distinguished as‘Romances and Fantasies’, a sufficiently descriptive definition. The third class—‘Novels of Ingenuity’—show a not infrequent disregard of the probable in the chain ofevents, and depend for their interest mainly on the incidents themselves. They might bealso characterised as ‘Experiments’, and were written for the nonce simply; thoughdespite the artificiality of their fable some of their scenes are not without fidelityto life” (Hardy, 1967, pp. 44-45). According to this classification, Jude would belongto the “Experiments” group, as one of the most “influenced” or “pieced” works. 2 Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (1872).3 Far from the Madding Crowd (1874); The Woodlanders (1887). 4 The Return of the Native (1880).

4


The tragedies of Wessex are associated with this supremely visual,sensual, and tactile recollection of its inhabitants and its bountifulnature. However, as Pinion (1990) noted (and as is also found inPaterson’s comments), Hardy’s “interest in pictures was not in scenicbeauty but in deeper realities” (p. 40). This belief is characteristic ofthose critical interpretations that search for a metaphysical dimensionhidden beneath the surface of representation in Hardy’s work. Objects ofnature, people, animals, even sounds, and smells, were supposed to embody“the mystery of life”, or as Springer (1983) wrote, the “metaphysicallevel” of the natural world (p. 11). Lawrence ranked Hardy with GiovanniVerga and Leo Tolstoy with regard to their endeavours in “reconcilingtheir metaphysic, their theory of being and knowing, with their livingsense of being”, which for Lawrence (1985) represented the subliminalaction of the mind:

Because a novel is a microcosm, and because man in viewing the universe mustview it in the light of a theory, therefore every novel must have the backgroundor the structural skeleton of some theory of being, some metaphysic. But themetaphysic must always subserve the artistic purpose beyond the artist’sconscious aim. Otherwise the novel becomes a treatise. (p. 144)

It is interesting to note that Lawrence considers Hardy’s realism to bebased on artistic objectivity but pervaded by the more powerful force ofthe independent spirit.

From the intertextual, postmodern perspective, however, the relationbetween reality and fiction in Hardy is based on the mediation oflanguage, summed up by Wright (1987) as clichés which are “fossilisedrelics of universal memory”, and by Miller (1970) as the preserved memoryof the “signs of things”. When speaking about the imaginary county ofHardy’s Wessex, Moore (1990) put this perspective in the most cogent way:

It is not “life” which motivates his fictions but “text”. Wessex is aFrankesteinian body of literature wherein the recognizable parts of other bodiesof work are stitched together into the semblance of a whole. This semblance neverlives organically as cohesive texts do, or are purported to, though it doessimulate that life. (p. 3)

The author agrees with Moore that Hardy (re)constructs Wessex’suniverse from intertexts that serve the poetics of his “life-stimulating”writing. Yet in the case of Jude, the author also sees the novel’ssignificance in Hardy’s awareness of the conventionally and ideologicallyconstrained language (and external society) on which the (re)presented

5


story is founded. Moreover, the author believes that Jude’s poetics is notturned against representation. This is arguably the most interestingaspect of the author’s poetics: a chiasmus originating from the differencebetween the textual and the real. Thus although intertexts are used tobring the realistic effects to the fore, the text restores the mimeticweight of representation by creating its own evidence of material reality,which is the text/sign itself. Hardy is fully aware that, as Gillan (1982)said, “The reality [expressed in discourse] is not an object but anotherword” (p. 129). According to Byerly’s (1997) seminal essay on Hardy’saesthetic forms of representation, Hardy applies intertexts from thefields of painting, architecture, and literature in particular, becausethey embody “a concrete expression of the will to create and recreate theworld” (p. 150). This same “will” might be attributed to Hardy’s owneffort of writing. In this sense, mediated forms of reality, such as art,attain a credible status as representation. Although mediated themselves,they refer to the naturalistic effort of expression that Byerly (1997)associated with Hardy’s “labor of creation” (p. 149).

In the visual sensuality and creative vitality of Hardy’s descriptions,Berger (1990) located Hardy’s desire to articulate the human world througha process of negotiation with the universe (p. xii), evidence of which shefinds in Hardy’s need to change “movement of image into icon” (1990, p.xii). She observes that the aesthetic dimension of that process isfundamental to Hardy’s poetics. According to Berger and other critics(Smart, 1961; Paulin, 1975), visual thinking is at the core of Hardy’saesthetics. Yet in this analysis, the visual corresponds with his“semiotic imagination”, which Berger (1990) recognized in Hardy’s attemptto communicate with the reader: “Seeing for him is not a metaphor forknowing; it is a form of knowing. He saw the essential lines and shapes ofeverything and tried to let the reader see them too” (p. xii).

On the one hand, he is very sensitive and passionate about objects inreality, about people and their relationships, and about life itself andits palpable colours, physical shapes, lines, scents and sounds, indeedits very matter. But on the other hand, Hardy knows that it is notpossible to express either materiality or his own feelings in a directform. Berger (1990) regarded this situation as producing the “unresolvedtension and a dynamic play among images” in Hardy’s poetics (p. xii). Thisis a distinctive feature of Hardy’s understanding of representation, andit finds its articulation in Jude, which on the one hand displays its ownartificiality and literary nature as a work of art, but on the other

6


ratifies its own effort of mimesis. Icons of graphic signs, and poeticimages of photographs, letters, sculptures, and designs, participate inthe plot as metonymies of some imagined originals, but at the same timethey symbolize the mediated forms of the story’s discourse.

Icons The Grapic Signs

By breaking free of referential relationships with external reality,these signs attain an autonomous existence as objects within the physicalspace of the page. The graphic sign of a pointing finger drawn on the pageof the novel represents Jude’s inscription on a milestone (see Figure 1),carved “with his keen chisel” (Hardy, 1998(1895), I, 11, p. 73).5

Figure 1. The carved inscription. Source: Hardy (1998(1895), I, 11, p. 73).

No additional explanation is needed: The sign is just there in itsiconic form. The finger, Jude’s initials, and the word “THITHER” are anemblem, in the novel signifying an object in Jude’s reality: “By the lightof a match he could still discern what he had cut so enthusiastically solong ago” (Hardy, 1998(1895), I, 11, p. 73). The letters carved in stonedo not signify anything but themselves: in semiotic terms, they are anicon—a signified equal to its signifier. In the novel’s universe, this isan icon of reality: a “fetish” which affects Jude’s memory with itsphysical appearance. Wright (1991) wrote:

This stone is also one instance of the things on which we leave our imprint.Before the book is ended the carving is already obscured by moss. So it is withall the works of Man. “Object history” is in fact evidence of human history, butall that such evidence shows is our own impermanence. (p. 47)

Graphically differentiated signs, however, attract our attention withtheir materiality. Before they acquire any meaning in the narrativecontext, graphic signs influence our perception with their layout, which

5 See also Figure 4 in the Appendix for the manuscript image. Hereby the author wouldlike to express the author’s thanks to the University of Liverpool Library, SpecialCollections Archives, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the Dorset County Museum,which enabled the author to complete the author’s research on the Manuscript of Jude theObscure and photocopy the pages from a microfilm ref. No Spec Mic 309.

7


in being a part of the page, is also part of the fictional story. WhenJude observes the icon, he notes: “The sight of it, unimpaired, within itsscreen of grass and nettles, lit in his soul a spark of the old fire”(Hardy, 1998(1895), I, 11, p. 73). Thus a picture of the stone evoked inJude’s memory becomes an object of his own history, or a fetish from hispast. As a metatextual sign, the letters metaphorically manifest thereification of meaning, and this is the same approach that the writertakes towards his own text while using signs on the page.

An inscription carved by Sue (see Figure 2) suggests a similarinterpretation. When Jude meets Sue for the first time in the shop inChristminster, he does not speak to her, but observes her figure and herwork from a distance:6

He stole a glance round. Before her lay a piece of zinc, cut to the shape of ascroll three or four feet long, and coated with a dead-surface paint on one side.Hereon she was designing or illuminating, in characters of Church text, thesingle word. (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 2, p. 88)

Figure 2. Allelulia. Source: Hardy (1998(1895), II, 2, p. 88).

Sue’s design emerges from the text in its descriptive and metatextualform. The word presented on the page in Gothic font symbolizes Sue’sinscription. However, in the universe of the novel the word on the pageplays the role of the original inscription, not that of its symbolicreflection. This is the word both Jude and the reader can see before theireyes. It belongs to the world of fiction, and yet is bracketed off fromit. What is also evident on the metatextual side is that Hardy adds thewhole fragment to the manuscript on the back page, including the precise,ornate drawing made in ink (Hardy, 1895, p. 86). It can be observed howimportant it is for the author to signal the Christian command in agraphic form. The graphic sign makes the referent materially present, andchanges it into an object which in the plot overwhelms Jude: “A sweet,saintly, Christian business, hers! thought he” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 2,p. 88). A piece of zinc is just a thing, but through Jude’s perception itbecomes a fetish of Sue.

Other fetishes of Jude’s are the books he so admires. The Greek letters

6 See also Figure 5 in the Appendix for the manuscript image.

8


which represent the New Testament belong to Jude’s thoughts, but firstthey draw attention to the materiality of their Greek font. The narratordescribes Jude’s act of reading: “He sat down, opened the book, and withhis elbows firmly planted on the table, and his hands to his temples,began at the beginning: Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΦΗΚΗ” (Hardy, 1998(1895), I, 7, p. 43).

In the first version of the manuscript these letters (“The Gospel ofSaint Luke” in Greek) belonged typographically to the main sentence(Hardy, 1895, p. 41), but Hardy later changed the formatting and insteadindented them to form a new paragraph (see Figure 6 in the Appendix). Intheir present form, they amount to a symbol of a book, or from a semioticpoint of view, of the intertext which composes the novel. Jude reads theletters incorporated into the text in their original, which providespalpable evidence of their existence, additionally ratified by thedetailed description of Jude’s physical posture—a plausible frame for theact of reading. The letters reappear in their Greek form in the next scenewhen their material appearance is identified by Jude (Hardy, 1998(1895),I, 7, pp. 48-49)7: “There lay his book open, just as he had left it, andthe capital letters on the title-page regarded him with fixed approach inthe grey starlight, like the unclosed eyes of the dead man: Η ΚΑΙΝΗΔΙΑΦΗΚΗ”.

Berger (1990) suggested that these inscriptions serve a double function:

It is ironic that he responds to his own engraved words as if they were apositive sign of something outside of his self. While the letters, carved instone, do represent to Jude his individual and ideal plans, they also seem tohave an external power over him. He is a romantic, a perennial mythmaker, whogrew to idolise his Old Testament study in Greek, and Greek letters, too, wereplaced on the page as items to worship. (p. 144)

As metaphorical figures these graphic signs express Jude’s passion,while at the same time they refer only to themselves and become fetishesof their own unreachable referents. In the text it is the stylized printthat signifies their objectified status. The letters Jude inscribes in themilestone symbolize his past dreams, but in their material form they alsobecome the object of his desire. While imagining his future, Jude ispursuing symbols, or from a metatextual perspective—signifiers, of hisideals. In the context of the novel this juxtaposition indicates atransposition of the ideal into a manufactured object—a fetish to worship,

7 See Figure 6 in the Appendix for the manuscript image.

9


which by being so graphically real emphasises the sensual materiality ofthe world created by the writer. Visual Icons in Hardy’s Poetry

This approach to language, defined here as metatextual, Armstrong (2000)observed also in Hardy’s poetry. Armstrong’s comment made in relation toHardy’s own drawing made on the page next to Swinburne’s poem can beapplied to Jude’s poetics: “In this formula, the trope signals thenecessary non-confluence of self and language, of history and utterance,even as it suggests the possibility of a restorative crossing toequivalence” (Armstrong, 2000, p. 159). Nevertheless, as a materiallyrecognisable gestalt, the sign is to be understood as evidence of itscreation. This peculiar way of perceiving reality was illustrated by Hardyhimself (see Figure 3) in the drawing he added to the poem “In a Eweleazenear Weatherbury”, in Wessex Poems (Paulin, 1975, p. 24):

Figure 3. “In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury”. Reproduced in Paulin (1975, p. 2).

Paulin (1975) noted that, in this drawing, a landscape and a pair ofspectacles:

have no apparent or necessary connection with each other […] a relationship israndom and gratuitous, like objects in a surrealist picture. His looking at thescene, like his or our general experience of the outer world, has no relation towhat he sees and is purely accidental. (p. 24)

According to Paulin, there is a lack of relation between the spectaclesand the landscape they overshadow, yet what he does not notice is themediative role of the frames. As Paulin (1975) aptly observed, in Hardy’swriting, “There is no sense, as in Wordsworth and Coleridge, of a creativerelationship between the mind and fact” (p. 25). But by displaying the

10


difference between mind and fact, which the graphic icon designates, Hardyconnects them. Spectacles as ontological chiasmus thus appear to be anindispensable conjunction between representation and the real. To expressreality means to see it through meditative spectacles that precede seeing.By framing the narrative of Jude, Hardy reflects the problem of the textualentangled with the real. As a fictional world commanded by language, thenovel does not reliably represent reality, but nonetheless it is itself apart of a reality, and thus while voicing its problems with literaryconventions the novel in fact evokes the real. This paradox confirmsHardy’s attitude to fiction “conditioned by its surroundings like a river-stream” (Hardy, 1967, p. 125), the originality of which lies in seekingnot the essential laws of nature but “those laws framed merely as socialexpedients by humanity” (Hardy, 1967, p. 127). Visual Signs and Double Effect of Reality

The materiality of the sign participates in the plot of the novel, butit also disrupts the typographical consistency of the page. As a part ofthe text, the sign discloses its foreign origin and doubles theperspective of the scene. Sue’s work is to be perceived as if it werethere in front of Jude, and at the same time it belongs to a metatextualreality. This “doubleness” effect, as Iser (1987) wrote, revealed “thecoexistence of what is mutually incompatible” (p. 221). Ontologically,either perspective excludes the other, but in the reality of the novelthey posit a new as-if-real order within which they can be bridged—thoughnot blurred—to generate a dialogical representation. In Jude, these signsplay the same role as quotations: their typographical differencecommunicates their extratextual affiliation, yet they are simultaneouslyinvolved in the plot as the object of the characters’ observations andrecitations. Protagonists observe or recite texts in narrative scenes, butthese scenes also disclose the material function of iconic signs in thenovel’s reality.

Copy Photographs as Reflection of the Real

The allegorical figure of a copy refers to the existence of someoriginal reality, which—like an icon in the novel—acquires the status of afetish and stands for the labour of (creative) experience. On the level ofthe plot among others, it is a model of the city of Christminster andJerusalem, and Sue’s photograph.

A photograph of Sue is found by Jude in his aunt’s house, “between the

11


brass candlesticks on her mantelpiece” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 1, p. 78).Its objectified function is introduced into the text through a sequence ofactualized metonyms (candlesticks) which also surround Jude’s discovery ofa photograph of himself in Alfredston, in a shop to which Arabella hassold all their property:

A few days later he entered a little broker’s shop in the main street of thetown, and amid a heterogeneous collection of saucepans, a clothes-horse, rollingpin, brass candlestick, swing looking-glass, and other things at the back of theshop, evidently just brought in from a sale, he perceived a little framedphotograph, which turned out to be his own portrait (Hardy, 1998(1895), I, 11, p.72)

A photograph is a symbolic representation of a person’s likeness, but itis also an object to be used just for decoration, or as a commodity forsale. In the novel the photograph not only conveys a semblance of theoriginal, but it also retains the value of the material object whichstands for the original. When Jude moves into his new room in Melchester,it is “furnished with framed photographs of the rectories and deaneries atwhich his landlady had lived as trusted servant in her time” (Hardy,1998(1895), III, 1, p. 135), but he “add[s] to the furniture of his roomby unpacking photographs of the ecclesiastical carvings and monuments thathe had executed with his own hands” (Hardy, 1998(1895), III, 1, p. 136). Fetish as the Object of Desire

Jude and his landlady, although believing in different idols, treattheir images in the same fetishistic way, which suggests idolatry in areligious or erotic sense. For the viewers, a photograph, which is nothingmore than a copy of reality, is a special version of reality worthworshipping. Although bearing a symbolic connection with the original, itbecomes detached from this original and starts functioning as a fetish;hence Jude’s need to burn a photograph of himself in the act of destroyingthe memory of being Arabella’s husband. Similarly, having sent Jude aphotograph of Sue, Jude’s aunt becomes afraid that he will fall in lovewith her image, as if the girl and her photograph were the one and thesame, and she warns him “not to bring disturbance into the family by goingto see the girl or her relations” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 2, p. 85). Asthe reader knows, Jude does not follow his aunt’s advice, although at thebeginning he does try to restrain himself from speaking to Sue, realizingthat it would be “scarcely honourable towards his aunt to disregard herrequest so incontinently” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 2, p. 89). His feelings

12


for Sue are fired up even before he sees her; he falls in love with herphotograph the first time he sees it, beyond any rational thought. When hereceives the photograph it immediately becomes a lively part of hisreality: “Jude, a ridiculously affectionate fellow, promised nothing, putthe photograph on the mantelpiece, kissed it—he did not know why—and feltmore at home. She seemed to look down and preside over his tea” (Hardy,1998(1895), II, 2, p. 85).

Jude’s affectionate attitude to the picture reminds of erotic fetishism,which allegorically roots the representation of the sign in the real. Hisreaction to Sue’s photograph displays symptoms of “pleasurable emotions”:The photograph evokes feelings of familiarity and safety, yet it alsoembodies his erotic expectations, suddenly expressed in the kiss thatawakens Sue’s photograph to life. As Krafft-Ebing (1965(1886)) explained:“Erotic fetichism makes an idol of physical or mental qualities of aperson or even merely of objects used by that person, etc., because theyawaken mighty associations with the beloved person, thus originatingstrong emotions of sexual pleasure” (p. 11). Jude worships the picture asa private and homely divine, radiating with corporal attraction. Heattributes to Sue the same qualities that he would attribute to a woman hewanted to observe rather than meet in person. It is actually Sue who firstsends him a note and initiates their meeting, as Jude, although dreamingof her, is reluctant to contact her in reality. He is satisfied with thecontemplation of her appearance from a distance, with worshipping herphotograph or experiencing her presence in a piece of work she has made inzinc.

While considering Jude’s feelings for Sue in indirect speech, thenarrator acknowledges that:

To be sure she was almost an ideality to him still. Perhaps to know her wouldbe to cure himself of this unexpected and unauthorized passion. A voice whisperedthat, though he desired to know her, he did not desire to be cured. (Hardy,1998(1895), II, 4, p. 98)

His “disease”, indicating a half-religious and half-erotic fetishism,provides the kinds of “pleasurable emotion” to which he is afraid tosuccumb, at the cost of meeting his idol in reality. The pleasure he feelswhen considering Sue is produced in his imagination, and is beyond anyactual interaction with her person. Krafft-Ebing (1965(1886)) termed thisa “peculiar individual impression which is in no wise connected with theexternal appearance of the sign, symbol or fetich” (p. 11). The distance

13


between Jude and the object of his worship guarantees the constantreinvigoration of that impression. Jude recognizes that his feelings aredifferent from those he experienced for Arabella: “After all, he said, itis not altogether an erotolepsy that is the matter with me, as at that firsttime” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 3, p. 98). The lack of any direct eroticfulfilment, which with Arabella was shifted onto a “fetish”, excuses hisambiguous love for Sue. To authorize his passion, Jude has to worship heras an idol.

The photograph, which replaces Sue—the-original, symbolizes her falseappearance—that which is reflected on the photographic plate. In A Laodicean(1881), Hardy uses the same figure to expound the artificiality anddeception that a copy embodies. When William Dare tries to discouragePaula from going to Somerset, he shows her a picture in which Somersetappears drunk. Paula, who is almost about to believe it, discovers fromCharlotte that it is only a distorted photographic image. Byerly (1997)noted that “The trick represents in exaggerated form the danger ofphotographs: that they be taken as exact replicas of their subject” (p.164). This juxtaposition plays a special role in religious practices inwhich, to repeat Krafft-Ebing (1965(1886)), the fetish “finds its originalmotive in the delusion that its object, i.e., the idol, is not a meresymbol, but possesses divine attributes” (p. 11). Similarly, Sue’s replicais taken for more than the original, for it constitutes a separate objectto worship: the photograph ceases to be an index of a given reality, andinstead becomes an alternative reality of its own. As Armstrong (2000)argued in relation to Hardy’s poem “The Photograph”, “it comes torepresent mourning, abstracting and estranging its subject matter from theevent of the photograph” (p. 59). This juxtaposition also signifies theillusion of the embodiment of the real in a symbolic representation of thenovel’s language. In this way, Hardy denies the metaphysical qualities ofrepresentation and attracts attention to the creative process. Model as a Sign of the Original

Sue’s photograph, like the typographic sign before, deludes the viewersinto believing that the sign that they see or read corresponds to theoriginal beyond representation. When Jude attributes metaphysicalqualities to the texts that he studies, to Sue’s photograph, and to apiece of zinc in which he sees the embodiment of her “sweet, saintly,Christian business” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 2, p. 88), he does preciselywhat the narrator mocks. Through Jude’s failure to become a student at

14


Christminster and a dramatic conclusion to his romance, the narrationreveals that his ideals are devoid of divine qualities and should not betrusted.

This argument becomes clear in a conversation between Sue andPhillotson. Sue, who doubts the accuracy of the model of Jerusalem,explicitly admits that it is impossible to recreate the original throughsemblance: “This model, elaborate as it is, is a very imaginaryproduction. How does anybody know that Jerusalem was like this in the timeof Christ?” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 5, p. 106). Sue’s question is answeredby Phillotson, a defender of mimesis who trusts in the surface appearanceof things as “the best conjectural maps”. Phillotson argues that empiricalmeasurements and confirmations by “actual visits to the city as it nowexists” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 5, p. 106) are enough to establish acredible representation of a place which ceased to exist in its originalform thousands of years ago. Phillotson, who reads man-made proofsmimetically and mistakes surface appearance for the truth, misses themediative and distorting phase of sociocultural and political interferencein the processes of representation. By contrast Sue, a modern woman, isconvinced that “there was nothing first-rate about the place, or people,after all—as there was about Athens, Rome, Alexandria, and the other oldcities” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 5, p. 106).

The models of Jerusalem and Christminster delude not only people likePhillotson, but also Jude himself. They are like the holy text, embodiedin the novel by the vague image of Christminster desired by Jude, whichthe physician Vilbert dubs the “Heavenly Jerusalem”. The idea of thesource which seduces and deludes is replicated in the imagery of classicaltexts, the key metaphor for the novel, inscribed as quotations on theChristminster walls, and later reanimated in a consumable copy made by Suewho, when selling Christminster cakes to Arabella, remarks: “They arereminiscences of the Christminster Colleges. Traceried windows, andcloisters, you see. It was a whim of his to do them in pastry” (Hardy,1998(1895), V, 7, p. 312). There is irony in the reduction of theChristminster ideal to a pastry that Arabella is “unceremoniouslymunching” (Hardy, 1998(1895), V, 7, p. 312). The image of this powerfulcity of knowledge is consumed by the simple woman as food, and thereby isrobbed of dignity and austerity. Oxford, represented in the image of theChristminster cake, undergoes a moral and aesthetic decline which,ironically for Sue and Jude, becomes a great commercial success.

Eventually both the romantic and social plots in the novel become

15


affected by self-referentiality. Christminster Cathedral is recalled bySue as “almost the first place in which we looked in each other’s faces”(Hardy, 1998(1895), V, 6, p. 306). In the shop where Jude finds theletters painted by Sue, he also spots “ebony crosses that were almostcrucifixes, prayer books that were almost missals” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II,2, p. 88). The word “almost” in Jude’s and Sue’s statements withholdsreliability from both content and form. It brackets off their story as anintertext, an object, a sign, which can be endlessly reapplied to furnishthe imagination. Even the commodities which Sue and Jude try to sell are“so quaint and ancient a make as to acquire an adventitious value as art”(Hardy, 1998(1895), V, 6, p. 305). As the narrator implies in thispassage, the economic value of their material belongings is equal tonothing more than the owners’ “personal history” (Hardy, 1998(1895), V, 6,p. 305), which, as Jude observes, becomes the theme of the customers’discussion “instead of the furniture” (Hardy, 1998(1895), V, 6, p. 305).Through this narrative comment, which points to the reified status of thefurniture, the couple’s history is also transformed into an object. LikeSue, who regards herself as a heroine—“always much affected at a pictureof herself as an object of pity” (Hardy, 1998(1895), V, 6, p. 299)—thestory in the novel is a representation of real life, with no metaphysicalor moral connection to it.

In Hardy’s writing, monuments from ancient times possess neither thedignity of human heritage nor its glory and mystery. They are componentsof people’s environment, to which they become accustomed and eventuallyindifferent. Their ancient ancestors, as Hardy writes, “had lived so long,their time was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were sowidely removed from ours, that between them and the living there seemed tostretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to pass” (Hardy, 1997(1886), p.63). It was during Hardy’s time that professional archaeologicalexpeditions established the reputation and historical import ofarchaeology and geology. To a great extent this development was thanks tothe achievements of General Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers, who lived in Dorset andwas known to Hardy. Rivers can be described as the father of Britisharchaeology: His meticulous methods and absolute perfectionism in digging,protecting, classifying, and interpreting fossils laid the foundations ofa complex scheme of evidence to outline history.

As Bahn and Renfrew (1996(1991)) noted, Rivers was the author of thefirst typology of artefacts (in fact he coined the word “typology”) to beordered in “chronological, developmental sequence” (p. 25). Rivers also

16


worked on the excavation of the Maumbury Rings between 1908 and 1913,looking for evidence of the progression of humanity’s material culture,which he believed evolved from generation to generation like a sort ofgene (Bradley, 1975). Hardy had the opportunity to become familiar witharchaeological methods through his friendship with Rivers, who used toundertake private archaeological expeditions at the large Rushmore estatein Wiltshire. Hardy participated in several excavations (Hardy, 1967, pp.225, 232), particularly those in Max Gate, which had to be undertakenbefore his house could be erected (Hardy, 1967, p. 195). Regardless of hisdistrust in the “truth” of fossils, and with an opposite ambition to thatof Rivers, he became an advocate for archaeological expeditions and asupporter of the work of the Dorset County Museum (Hardy, 1967, pp. 191-195).

Hardy’s interpretation of history in Jude makes it plain that thegrandiosity of the past does not provide any moral support for thecharacters, quite the contrary: being enclosed in a fossil, the past isemptied of any connection with contemporary reality, and turns into aliterary symbol, a sign of representation. As Radford (2003) acknowledged:

Hardy repudiated Pitt-River’s naïve, easy optimism that the uncovered remainsof outmoded culture might enrich and irradiate the modern movement. Indeed, hisdepiction of Stonehenge in Tess intimates that the origins of our cultural legacyare based on vicious deeds and are best left behind. (p. 22)

According to Chippindale (2004(1983)), it was characteristic of theVictorian era to seek in fossils the evolutionary link with the past,clarified by the methods of patterning and objectifying. Chippindale(2004(1983)) wrote of the expeditions of scholars to Stonehenge:8 “Themassive collection of excavated finds, and the organisation of objects andstructures into the compartments of the three ages, were the particularforms taken in archaeology by the Victorian passions for accumulatingfacts and classifying by evolutionary schemes” (p. 128). It was the effortof classifying and the energy of trying to understand which attractedHardy, but he could not accept that archaeology regarded fossils as truthper se, which he perceived as, using Foucault’s (2002) words, an “allegory”of the social order (p. 155). The models of the cities, whether ancientJerusalem or contemporary Christminster in Jude, represent that passion for

8 Chippindale (2004(1983)) discussed nine large expeditions, by Atkinson, Piggott andStone, Beamish, Cunnington, the Duke of Buckingham, Gowland, Hawley, Mike Pitts, andWilliam Stukeley (pp. 20-56).

17


modelling and classifying. But the models must be appreciated not fortheir ability to transmit historical truth, but for the creative energyinvested in exhibiting them. As Sue argues, “There was nothing first-rateabout the place, or people, after all—as there was about Athens, Rome,Alexandria, and the other old cities” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 5, p. 106).Moreover, the implication of the presence of the models of the cities inthe narrative is that they serve as carriers of the ideologies whichprovide the foundations of their falsity, and thus are open to historical(and ethical) manipulation.

Ideals Venus as the Symbol of Cultural Idealisation

The scene in which Sue buys the figures of Venus and Apollo is theculmination of the novel’s self-critique of its self-referentiality, andthis scene will be discussed as a concluding argument. Sue, who decides tobuy a “Venus of standard pattern”, is able to distinguish the statuetteslying on the stall according to conventions that she has “naturally”absorbed as a member of Western culture:

They were in the main reduced copies of ancient marbles, and compriseddivinities of a very different character from those the girl was accustomed tosee portrayed, among them being a Venus of standard pattern, a Diana, and, of theother sex, Apollo, Bacchus, and Mars. (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 3, p. 93)

The figure of Venus is apparently recognized by Sue through herknowledge of other Venus statues. However, as noted by Paul Barlow (2002,personal communication, email interviews undertaken between February 2002and July 2003), the “standard pattern” does not seem to relate to theVenus de Milo, created in Greece in 130-120 BC and found with its armsmissing.9 While trying to hide her “heathen” purchase in parsley, Sue is“occasionally peeping inside the leaves to see that Venus’s arm was notbroken” (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 3, p. 94), which suggests that she is notaware of the armless statue. In 1820, a French anthropologist acquired theVenus de Milo; thus while Hardy was in London he could only have seen a

9 The author is here referring to material gathered from the British Museum in London,where the author’s part of research for this paper was conducted. All quotations fromPaul Barlow, Curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, are from privatecorrespondence. He also provided all the images of Venus used in this paper. The authorwould like to acknowledge her gratitude both to Paul Barlow and to the Curator of theMuseum, Thorsten Opper, for their help and individual observations regarding the roleof the Venus figure in Jude the Obscure.

18


cast of the statue in the British Museum. However, as a frequent visitorto the museum he would also have seen copies of the Venus Pudica, the mostpopular image of Venus at that time, which survived as both the CapitolineVenus and the Venus de Medici, the originals of which were displayed inRome and Florence respectively. For Hardy, which of these images wouldhave been considered the “standard pattern”?

Barlow suggests that the figure of Venus most likely referred to byHardy is that of the Venus Pudica, the “modest Venus”. Venus is portrayedbending forward slightly, turning to look over her left shoulder, andholding out her arms to cover her breasts and genitals, as though worriedabout her nakedness. Such a pose was convincing enough for Miss Fontover,Sue’s landlady, to believe that the figure was that of St Mary Magdalene.Barlow states that the Venus Pudica “was sometimes used in portrayals ofthe Penitent Magdalene”. Sue’s concerns about the arms of the figurine andMiss Fontover’s mistaken assumption do indeed point towards the VenusPudica rather than the Venus de Milo.

But to what extent does it matter which statue is the inspiration forSue’s Venus figurine? Barlow suggests that knowing the difference betweenthe Venus de Milo and the Venus Pudica enables a greater understanding ofHardy’s allusions, and posits that, “by alluding to the Venus Pudica(“modest Venus”) the author makes his comment on both Sue’s naiveté (shewas not aware of the Venus de Milo) and her embarrassment about herimmodest and pagan purchases”. However, Sue’s later reference to the VenusUrania (Universal Venus) (Hardy, 1998(1895), III, 6, p. 168) reveals thatshe is neither naive nor uneducated. This confirms her knowledge of therange of ancient figures, reinforced later in Jude’s recollection of herlooking at the Courtesan Phryne sculpted by Praxiteles. In the symbolicdimensions of the text, all these figures represent the different kinds oflove and desire that the characters develop in their progress from modestyand piety to growing independence and confidence. However, on the textuallevel, Venus is an intertext: an allusion derived from the empiricalworld, where it was a part of the contemporary cultural parole (see more inHavelock, 1995). According to the positivist tradition of interpretingallusions (Kellet, 1933), by not knowing the meaning of the real Venus,the reader misses the reference to the character’s evolution and the“truth” of the novel (Meyer, 1968). While it is accepted that historicalunderstanding of the cultural parole can expand the reading, in Jude,however, it is not the ideal original the reader is expected to decode. Infact, it is an allegorical configuration of the copies, which feed into

19


the intertextual archive of the story, where the influence of the real isbegotten. From Hardy’s perspective, the passion for the search for thereal is what makes the story “more truthful than truth” (Hardy, 1967, p.134). Therefore, the search for conventions of the “right” Venus, whichconstitutes the critique of the society represented in the novel, fills inthe space opened up by the intertextual narrative and points to therapture between the text and the real. As Berlatsky (2011) indicated, thisrapture creates a disjuncture where “real” must be identified andinterpreted. In that sense, Hardy’ prose would have more in common withantimimetic writing of Virginia Woolf and with postmodernist literature,than with Realistic tradition. Following Berlatsky’s (2011) analysis ofWoolf’s feminist ethics and aesthetics, it can be argued, that Jude, likeBetween the Acts (1940), “insists upon our capacity to access the realprecisely for political and ethical reasons” (p. 51). Venus as a Metaphor of Intertextuality

The original ancient beauty, supposedly the inspiration for Sue’s image,is unavoidably affected by all ideals of “Venus”, both imagined, andmanufactured. The sign which represents the copy of the standard Venus inthe novel holds the real world of all these searches, as well as theattempts and efforts to copy the Venus and manipulate its image fordifferent purposes. Although knowing the difference between them, whenHardy employs “Venus”, he refers not to the Venus of Melos or of Medici,but to the illusory power of the convention which narrates the concept oftheir originality. In this sense the Venus Urania or Phryne does notdiffer from the Venus of the “standard pattern”. They are poetic figureswhich reveal the oppressivity of the historicised metanarratives ofmimesis (truth), Christian morality, patriarchy, and history itself, whoseinfluence is eroded when represented as copy. Overused to that extent whencopies can be easily confused or juxtaposed, their semantic (ir)relevancewithin the context of the novel is ironically depicted through a series oferrors by potential interpreters or readers of the Venus. The statue couldequally well be taken for a figure of a Christian saint (Miss Fontover),as a symbol of independence (Sue) or a shrine to eroticism (Jude). Whenadapted in a new context, Venus undergoes semiotic transformations whichsymbolically articulate the anxieties of the characters. To the figurinefrom Christminster market, Sue attributes the quality of pagan freedom,hailing it as better than those “everlasting church fal-lals!” (Hardy,1998(1895), II, 3, p. 94), while for Miss Fontover the same figure

20


emanates a religious aura usually attributed to the Christian saints.Being an allegory of a copy, a sign of “Venus”, encapsulating the historyof its own irreducible interpretations, initiates a critique of “textualagency” (Armstrong, 2000, p. 75) as human agency.

The allegorical (re)adaptation of the Venus, typographic icons, andsymbolical copies, implies that the novel is an effect of conventions,ideologies, politics, and history. This goes against the dominant claim ofRealism of the nineteenth century, propagated by Taine, that the text isan effect of the writer’s personality. When Jude was first published, Hardyexperienced the pressure from that dominant view through negative reviewsand hostile reader reactions, which made him abandon writing prose forever(Millgate, 1971; Brooks, 1971; Draper, 1991(1975); Wright, 1991; Hardy,2000; Harvey, 2003). The social rejection of Jude was grounded in the beliefat the time that the novel was a reflection of Hardy’s immoral nature. Thestory was received as pathology, and it was banned in all cultural circlesin England. Hardy was berated for depicting illicit desire and producingsuggestive pictures of female sexuality.

The Venus scene in Jude links to the reality of social conventions andmoral constraints, but it also lies in what Barthes (1986) defined as “theeffect of reality” (p. 141), which the seller who persuades Sue topurchase the Venus reveals to buyers by crying “I-i-i-mages!” over hisstall (Hardy, 1998(1895), II, 3, p. 93). Signs in Jude, like images on thepeddler’s stall, might have abandoned their referents; however, they stillsymbolically display their affiliation in the frame of the discursivedifference that suggests a relation with “the real”, the Venus, who speakswith the voices of all her creators and interpreters, and who symbolizesthe real energy invested in her material appearance. Just as this energyis encapsulated in her figure, reality is captured in the intertexts inthe novel’s language. Intertexts are the pictorial and symbolicallegorization of the real. In the Venus scene, Hardy mocks the mimeticapproach to representation, but he also alludes to the danger it caninstigate in real life when a work of art is measured according to a moralscale.

Conclusions In Jude, the original—a word—is an intertext, a sign, and a copy to be

played with and adapt within new configurations of signs. The wordrepresents a movement towards the flexibility, temporality, andexchangeability so characteristic of post-modern forms of discourse. As

21


Foucault (1977) argued, words “become a text to be broken down, so as toallow that other meaning hidden in them to emerge and become clearlyvisible” (p. 304). By the turn of the 20th century, this dissociation oflanguage (for Foucault (1977), “the fragmented being of language” (p.305)) would result in the multiplication of copies, allusions, andquotations, regrouped around the central fact of the production ofconceptual models of reality (textual, scientific, or artistic).

Signs in Jude can be compared to Foucault’s (1977) notion of words, which“are like many other objects formed and deposited by history” (p. 305).The Venus figure, in the text standing for a concrete object, signifiesthe process of interpretation underlying its representation. Allusions andgraphic signs, as well as images of objects, people or stories, refer tothe materiality of the real world. By framing them on the level ofrepresentation, Hardy makes of them objects of textualization, while theprocess “of the making” is in its deepest sense real. Being the mediatedcopies of reality, they are originals in the text. In Jude, the mostpessimistic of his novels, Hardy overcomes the tragedy of people bydistancing them from the language, which represents their story immersedin conventions (through such conduits as education, church, art,archaeology, and literary discourse). As has been shown above, Hardy’snovel, just like the casts of antiquity, signifies not the original, butthe mode of copying it. The copy might be reproduced in studios and soldlike any other item at the market, yet it is in the act of copying thatthe real is experienced. Finally, Hardy’s self-aware writing does not markhis pessimism, but rather the reverse: It is a triumphal use of intertextsfor original creation.

References Armstrong, T. (2000). Haunted Hardy: Poetry, history, memory. London: Palgrave. Bahn, P., & Renfrew, C. (1996(1991)). Archaeology: Theories, methods, and practice. New York:

Thames and Hudson. Barthes, R. (1986). The rustle of language. (R. Howard, Trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Berger, S. (1990). Thomas Hardy and visual structures: Framing, disruption, process. New York and

London: New York University Press.Berlatsky, L. E. (2011) The real, the true, and the told: Postmodern historical narrative and the ethics of

representation. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. Boumelha, P. (Ed.). (2000). Jude the Obscure. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Bradley, R. (1975). Maumbury rings, Dorchester: The Excavation of 1908-1913.

Archaeologia. 105. Brooks, J. R. (1971). Thomas Hardy: The poetic structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

22


Byerly, A. (1997). Realism, representation and the arts in nineteenth-century literature. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Chapman, R. (1990). The languages of Thomas Hardy. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Chippindale, C. (2004(1983)). Stonehenge complete. London: Thames and Hudson. Cronin, R., Chapman, A., & Harrison, A. H. (Eds). (2002). Companion to victorian poetry.

Oxford: Blackwell.Draper, R. P. (1991(1975)). Hardy’s comic tragedy: Jude the Obscure. In R. P. Draper

(Ed.), Hardy: The tragic novels. London: Macmillan.Easson, A. (Ed.). (1991). Essays and studies: History and the novel. London: D.S. Brewer.Foucault, M. (1977). The order of things. London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (2002). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Routledge.Gillan, G. (1982). From sign to symbol. Brighton: The Harvester Press; Atlantic Highlands:

Humanities Press. Hardy, B. (1964). The appropriate form. London: Athlone Press.Hardy, B. (2000). Imagining imagination: Hardy’s poetry and fiction. London and New Bruswick, N.J.:

The Athlone Press. Hardy, T. (1895). Jude the Obscure. Manuscript, ref. no.: 761/02/03. Fitzwilliam Museum,

Cambridge.Hardy, T. (1967). Thomas Hardy: Personal writings. H. Orel (Ed.). London: Macmillan.Hardy, T. (1997(1886)). The mayor of casterbridge. K. Wilson (Ed.). London: Penguin.Hardy, T. (1998(1895)). Jude the Obscure. D. Taylor (Ed.). London: Penguin.Harvey, G. (2003). The complete critical guide to Thomas Hardy. New York: Routledge.Havelock, C. M. (1995). The Aphrodite of Knidos and her successors: A historical review of the female nude in

Greek art. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Holloway, J. (1953). The Victorian sage: Studies in argument. London: Macmillan.Iser, W. (1987). Representation: A performative act. In M. Krieger, (Ed.), The aims of

representation. New York: Columbia University Press. Kellett, E.E. (1933). Literary Quotation and Allusion. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons.

Knoepflmacher, U. C., & Tennyson, G. B. (Eds.). (1977). Nature and the Victorian imagination.Berkeley: University of California Press.

Krafft-Ebing, R. (1965(1886)). Psychopathia sexualis. (F. S. Klaf, Trans.). New York: Steinand Day.

Krieger, M. (1987). The aims of representation. New York: Columbia University Press. Lawrence, D. H. (1985). Study of Thomas Hardy and other essays. B. Steele (Ed.). Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press. Mallet, P. (2002). Thomas Hardy: Texts and contexts. New York: Palgrave. Mallet, P. (Ed.). (2000). The achievements of Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan.Maxwell, C. (2002). Vision and visuality. In R. Cronin, A. Chapman, & A. H. Harrison

(Eds.), Companion to Victorian poetry. Oxford: Blackwell.Meyer, H. (1968). The poetics of quotation in the European novel. (T. & Y. Ziolkowski Trans.).

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

23


Miller, J. H. (1970). Thomas Hardy: Distance and desire. Cambridge, M.A.: Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press.

Millgate, M. (1971). Thomas Hardy: His career as a novelist. New York: Random House.Moore, K. Z. (1990). The descent of the imagination: Post-romantic culture in the later novels of Thomas

Hardy. New York and London: New York University Press.Morgan, R. (1992). Cancelled words: Rediscovering Thomas Hardy. New York: Routledge.Nemesvari, R. (2011). Thomas Hardy, sensationalism and the melodramatic mode. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan. Paterson, J. (1960). The poetics of The Return of the Native. Modern Fiction Studies, 6.Paterson, J. (1977). Lawrence’s vital source: Nature and character in Thomas Hardy. In

U. C. Knoepflmacher & G. B. Tennyson (Eds.), Nature and the Victorian imagination. Berkeley:University of California Press.

Paulin, T. (1975). Thomas Hardy: The poetry of perception. London: Macmillan. Pinion, F. B. (1977). Thomas Hardy: Art and thought. London: Macmillan. Pinion, F. B. (1990). Hardy the writer: Survey and assessments. London: Macmillan.Radford, A. D. (2003). Thomas Hardy and the survivals of time. Aldershot: Ashgate. Rimmer, M. (2000). A feast of language: Hardy’s allusions. In P. Mallet, (Ed.), The

achievements of Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan.Saldívar, R. (2000). Jude the Obscure: Reading and the spirit of the law. In P. Boumelha

(Ed.), Jude the Obscure. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Scott, J. E. (1965). Spectacle and symbol in Thomas Hardy’s fiction. Philosophical Quarterly,

44.Smart, A. (1961). Pictorial images in the novels of Thomas Hardy’s fiction. Review of

English Studies, 12.Springer, M. (1983). Hardy’s use of allusion. London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press. Tanner, T. (1991(1975)). Color and movement in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. In R. P.

Draper (Ed.), Hardy: The tragic novels. London: Macmillan.Widdowson, P. (1989). Hardy in history: A study in literary sociology. London: Routledge.Woolf, V. (1970(1940). Between the acts. New York: Harvest. Wright, T. (1987). Tess of the D’Urbervilles. London: Macmillan.Wright, T. (1991). Space, time and paradox: The sense of history in Hardy’s last

novels. In A. Easson (Ed.), Essays and studies: History and the novel. London: D. S. Brewer.

Appendix

24


Figure 4. Jude the Obscure, Manuscript, p. 15.

Figure 5. Jude the Obscure, Manuscript, p. 86. Drawing added on the back of the page.

25


Figure 6. Jude the Obscure, Manuscript, p. 41.

26

Visual Imagination and the Mediation of Semiosis: Intertext and the Real in Thomas Hardy’s Jude...

Documents

Transcript of Visual Imagination and the Mediation of Semiosis: Intertext and the Real in Thomas Hardy’s Jude...