Far From the Madding Crowd 4th Thread Chapter 30 - 38

[Bionic Jean, Moderator]

Lee - actually the sword exercises by Troy in ch. 28, as well as the drills in The Trumpet-Major were also lifted, in this case from the three manuals I mentioned. Perhaps we are more inclined to accept it if it is technical, and credited?

There is also a poem which Thomas Hardy wrote in pencil, inside a grandfather clock in the family cottage, signing his name after it. For many years it was proudly shown as an example of his early talent - until someone found the original in a book of earlier poetry. But he was little more than a child then ...

The paragraph I quoted (and these details) are from Hardy of Wessex: His Life and Literary Career by Carl J. Weber (1965). It's quite an important biography by an American author who has written many books about Hardy, so perhaps your library could get it for you?

We all hate plagiarism, but it's hard to prove, and getting increasingly harder. I was really quite hurt when someone recently put a comment after one of my reviews asking how I did it, and going on to say it was probably AI ... (all the hours I spend on just one sometimes ... 😧actually Chris saw that and soon put him right! 😊)

Sorry to spoil the end of this thread which includes your important link Bridget - please scroll back one post everyone!

[Werner]

(I'm posting this comment here, rather on the newer current thread here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...-- , because it relates to the discussion here rather than there.)

In the case of Hardy's use of military manuals to describe Troy's sword exercises, I'd say we could classify that under the heading of research; for a writer to whom sword drill was outside his personal experience, he'd have been remiss not to rely on written sources that could give him realistic information that he wouldn't know otherwise. But deliberately lifting another writer's description of a storm and passing it off as his own work is in a very different category.

[Bionic Jean, Moderator]

That's a fair point Werner. I agree the sword drills were essentially research. Also, he uses the terms from them as allusions, in a couple of places in his later imagery which is quite inventive.

For the storm, I do have mixed feelings, as Carl J. Weber specified all the words he altered, as well as making it clear that he copied the progress of the storm, part by part. So it sounds as though it isn't quite a straight "lift". It's almost like a new writer practising his craft, just as young artists were taken on by Italian great masters to copy their paintings - (and also to work on the "boring bits" for them uncredited!)

Other extenuating circumstances might be that Thomas Hardy was writing anonymously, and probably never expected that the work would still be read so many years later.

Still, this is a pretty poor defence. Far From the Madding Crowd had been published as a one volume novel with his name on by the end of the year. Plus the point remains that Thomas Hardy never did credit the former author, or "own up" to to using that passage by William Harrison Ainsworth as a sort of template, and that has to be sneaky. 🤔 If it had not been for that later critic, or someone else who knew both works, we might still be unaware.

What else might there be which we have yet to spot?

[Brian]

Hardy isn't known for humor, but every once in a while his characters utter laugh-out-loud lines. Bathsheba, desperate to defend Sergeant Troy to her confidante Liddy, and more so to convince herself, having heard plenty of bad stories about him, tells her "He is a sort of steady man in a wild way, you know."

I was fascinated and a little surprised at first, but then satisfied of her honesty, when Bathsheba tells Boldwood, "An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me."

SPOILER ALERT: (Skip this paragraph if you don't know the story)
It is interesting that in the two film adaptations I've seen, both directors declined to include Boldwood's early threat to horsewhip Troy after he "stole" Bathsheba. Perhaps they both felt it would be too much foreshadowing. I think Hardy made use of foreshadowing pretty freely.

IMO Boldwood's behavior after his courting of Bathsheba fails is one of Hardy's best ideas in the novel. And the behavior is complex and prolonged.

Has unrequited love ever been dramatized (and stimulated?) with greater fanfare than the lightning storm that nearly kills Gabriel and Bathsheba ?!

[Bionic Jean, Moderator]

Brian, yes Thomas Hardy's sly humour often sneaks up on me too! No belly laughs here, but there are plenty of droll observations, aren't there.😊