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Far From the Madding Crowd,
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Keith Burnette
Hardy took the title from Thomas Gray's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751).
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
"Madding" means "frenzied" here.
Lucasta Miller points out that the title is an ironic literary joke as Gray is idealising the noiselessness and sequestered calm whereas Hardy "disrupts the idyll, and not just by introducing the sound and fury of an extreme plot ... he is out to subvert his readers' complacency".
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
"Madding" means "frenzied" here.
Lucasta Miller points out that the title is an ironic literary joke as Gray is idealising the noiselessness and sequestered calm whereas Hardy "disrupts the idyll, and not just by introducing the sound and fury of an extreme plot ... he is out to subvert his readers' complacency".
Willow
It's very subtle, but the difference is perception. The word 'madding' describes the crowd. The word 'maddening' describes how the narrator feels about the crowd. You could observe a madding crowd at a distance and not find them maddening at all.
George P.
Hardy took the title from an old poem (by Thomas Grey) to describe the setting, near a small town where the pace of life is quiet- "madding" in this sense meant the hustle/bustle of cities.
Tim Weir
'Far from the madding crowd' is a quotation from an eighteenth century English poem, Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in an English churchyard: '' Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."
Barbara Bassett
Madding means frenzied, not maddening
Elaine
It isn't old English but related to a rural dialect of Dorset and Devon farmers. Old English goes back centuries and centuries. Middle English was Chaucer. So "modern" English would take us up to centuries after that up until today.
Ellen
Just want to add that Madding Crowd may reflect the frenzy of Bathsheba's suitors toward her
as opposed to Oak who remained calm throughout and won her in the end.
as opposed to Oak who remained calm throughout and won her in the end.
Yllacaspia
Because the words mean something entirely different. A madding crowd is frenzied/bustling. A maddening one is spoiling for a fight or causing irritation.
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