Ringing the Changes: Thomas Hardy’s Communication Networks
Ringing the Changes: Thomas Hardy’s Communication Networks
This chapter puts an end to a characteristic strain of critical grief bemoaning the dissolution of idyllic country habits including, in particular, the pealing of soundscapes past. Thomas Hardy understood that Britain was by no means a closed or stable acoustic haven, and that its structures of communication – from bell ringing to electric telegraphy – were always already susceptible to rival systems of affect and pleasure. Beginning with a short introduction to Hardy’s early experiments in transmission – in Desperate Remedies (1871) – Edward Allen elucidates the texture of that early novel before moving through the ‘soundways’ of his verse and late fiction. Arguing that Hardy’s ‘rural erotics’ kindled a new desire for urban-pastoral connection in the early decades of the twentieth century, the chapter ends with the first sustained inquiry into Hardy’s radio habit in the 1920s, interpreting this sign of a countrified personality gone live as a template for rural modernity.
Keywords: Soundscapes, Thomas Hardy, Rural novel, Bell ringing, Electric telegraphy, Radio, Interwar communication, Networks
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