Thomas Hardy: Ancient and Modern

177 in responsible company: "There is considerable ambiguity about Lawrence's metaphors for the deeper 'consciousness' (variously qualified as cosmic, impersonal, phallic, blood, dark, etc.); it generally appears to be 'unconscious in good part .... Some of his definitions are rather odd: "Phallic consciousness Is the thing we mean, in the best sense, by common sense."1 (238) The price for this book ($6.50) seems high and may perhaps keep it from becoming universally popular. However, I wish the book wel1. It is a good book, despite the few reservations that a reviewer might want to mention. I suspect that Mr. Widmer's book will, in fact, rank with the very best of the Lawrence criticism that has thus far been published. Purdue University Robert Hunting 3. D. H. Lawrence: A Critical Crusade. D. H. UWRENCE. Ed by Mark Spilka0 [Twentieth Century Views Series.] Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963. $3.95 cloth; $1.95 Spectrum Paperback. Largely emphasizing the criticism of the last ten years, this collection of essays ¡s almost as much a study In Leavisism as it is of Lawrence. The earlier attacks on Lawrence by T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards, and R. P. Blackmur are referred to in Spilka's introduction but not represented. However, in including essays by Mark Schorer and Dorothy Van Ghent, Spilka does introduce some critics whose attitude toward Lawrence mingles "hesitations and commitments." Generally, the essays are by what may be described as new New Critics, by critics who have in various ways modified the New Criticism of ten or more years ago. One may note that even T. S. Eliot has, characteristically, recanted his earlier opinion of Lawrence and that Schorer has from article to article moved from qualified disapproval to warm enthusiasm. Represented under three divisions are: Dorothy Van Ghent, Marvin Mudrick, Mark Schorer, Harry T. Moore, and Julian Moynahan (The Major Novels); Monroe Engel, Graham Hough, Mark Spilka, and W. D. Snodgrass (The Tales); V. de S. Pinto, Arthur A. Waterman, Richard Foster, and Raymond Williams (Other Genres). These are excellent critics and excellent essays, but one wonders if Mr. Spilka may not be sacrificing some very good non-Leavisian points of view, and, perhaps, more vigorous controversy, for the sake of unity, which in an anthology of this kind serves little purpose. Daniel Weiss' "Oedipus in Nottinghamshire," LITERATURE AND PSYCHOLOGY, VII (Aug 1957), 33-42, or some other Freudian analysis (by, say, Louis Fraiberg or Frederick J. Hoffman), for example, might have been worth including . Purdue University Helmut E. Gerber 4. Thomas Hardy: Ancient and Modern. HARDY: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS. Ed by Albert J. Guerard. [Twentieth Century Views Series.] Englewood 61 iffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963. $3.95 cloth; $1.95 Spectrum Paperback. 178 Mr. Guerard, in seeking close examinations of individual novels — like those by Dorothy Van Ghent, Paterson, and Alvarez—has noted their paucity, one might say relative paucity. He appears to wish to avoid the "large essay in synthesis." One must recognize, of course, that Hardy's thought so links his work that the "large essay in synthesis" is particularly appropriate to studies of his work. Also, Mr. Guerard remarks that "Since 1940, criticism of Hardy the novelist has not been particularly active, partly because THE SOUTHERN REVIEW had covered so much ground, partly because Hardy does not lend himself to the methods of the new critics. . . ." Yet my own compilation of writings about Hardy, some 2,000 items and still in progress, shows a considerable increase of writings about Hardy the novelist after 1940, although, granted, mainly of the "large essays in synthesis" kind. Further, in more recent years, quite a few critics have turned to close examination of individual novels, especially of THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE and JUDE THE OBSCURE. Four of the thirteen articles Mr. Guerard elects to reprint are from THE SOUTHERN REVIEW Hardy Number of 1940 and two others are from D. H. Lawrence's PHOENIX (1936). The remaining articles are mainly dated in the 1950s; one is dated I96I. Curiously, the PMLA annual bibliography for I96I lists 18-20 items on Hardy, and the one for I960 lists about 24 items, many of them major examinations of...