The Return of the Native - Brossura

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0140435182 ISBN 13: 9780140435184

Casa editrice: Penguin Classics, 2025

Riassunto

La tragica visione di Thomas Hardy di un amore che lotta per superare pregiudizi e rifiuto, The Return of the Native è edita da Penguin Classics con un'introduzione di Penny Bouhmelha. Sullo sfondo deprimente di Egdon Heath, la focosa Eustacia Vye trascorre le sue giornate, desiderando solo un amore passionale. Crede che la sua fuga da Egdon risieda nel matrimonio con Clym Yeobright, tornato da Parigi e scontento del suo lavoro lì. Ma Clym desidera tornare nella comunità di Egdon; un desiderio che lo mette in opposizione alla moglie e li porta entrambi alla disperazione. Basata sulla prima edizione del testo, questa edizione include note dettagliate di revisioni successive apportate da Hardy, glossario, bibliografia e utile cronologia della vita dell'autore. Nella sua introduzione Penny Bouhmelha identifica le allusioni letterarie e classiche nel testo di Hardy, in particolare i parallelismi con Madame Bovary di Flaubert e con la storia di Edipo. Così facendo dimostra la pretesa di Hardy di uno status tragico per le vite umane ordinarie e i modi in cui i personaggi del romanzo, in particolare gli amanti sfortunati e Damon Wildeve, rovinano le loro possibilità di padroneggiare i propri destini. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), nato a Higher Brockhampton, vicino a Dorchester, si formò inizialmente come architetto prima di guadagnarsi da vivere come scrittore. Sebbene si considerasse principalmente un poeta, Hardy fu autore di alcuni dei romanzi più importanti della fine del XVIII secolo: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) e Jude the Obscure (1895). In mezzo alla controversia causata da Jude the Obscure, si rivolse alla poesia che aveva scritto per tutta la vita. Nei successivi trent'anni pubblicò oltre novecento poesie e il suo dramma epico in versi, The Dynasts. Se ti è piaciuto The Return of the Native, potresti apprezzare anche The Tenant of Wildfell Hall di Anne Brontë, disponibile anche su Penguin Classics. 'La più grande scrittrice tragica tra i romanzieri inglesi'Virginia Woolf.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote novels and poetry, much of which is set in the semi-imaginary county of Wessex. His novels include Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge(1886), Tess of the D'Urbervilles(1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). He published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, in 1898 and continued to publish collections of poems until his death.

Patricia Ingham is Senior Research Fellow and Reader at St Anne's College, Oxford. She has written on the Victorian novel and on Hardy in particular. She is the General Editor of all of Hardy's fiction in the Penguin Classics and has edited Gaskell's North and South for the series.

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A SATURDAY afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.

The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. The distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking dread.

In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn: then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced half-way.

The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Penguin Classics
• Data di pubblicazione: 2025
• ISBN 10: 0140435182
• ISBN 13: 9780140435184
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 496
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile