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The Original Source of Hardy's Dynasts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John A. Cassidy
John A. Cassidy*
Affiliation:
South Bend, Ind.
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Extract

Professor Hoxie N. Fairchild has conclusively shown that Thomas Hardy took much of the inspiration, the thought, and the structure of his epic poem of the Napoleonic Wars, The Dynasts, from Robert Buchanan's Drama of Kings, published in 1871. But the story does not end there. The purpose of this article is to make clear that Buchanan was, in turn, a liegeman of Victor Hugo and borrowed extensively from the poetry of the great French exile for the form and much of the matter of his Drama of Kings; that, specifically, Hugo's La Légende des siècles furnished much of the inspiration and the substance of Buchanan's poem; and that Hugo, rather than Buchanan, is thus the original source of Hardy's epic.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 69 , Issue 5 , December 1954 , pp. 1085 - 1100
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954

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References

1 “The Immediate Source of The Dynasts,” PMLA, lxvii (March 19S2), 43-64.

2 I am indebted to Dr. Charles E. Parnell, Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Notre Dame, for his interest in this article and for suggestions which have aided in its compilation.

3 Harriett Jay, Robert Buchanan (London, 1903), pp. 13-14.

4 Edouard Renard, La Vie et l'œuvre de Louis Blanc (Toulouse, 1922), pp. 105, 108, 131.

5 Buchanan, Master-Spirits (London, 1873), p. 147.

6 Buchanan, “From Aeschylus to Victor Hugo,” A Look Round Literature (London, 1887), pp. 1-53.

7 Athenaeum, 11 Nov. 1871, p. 622.

8 Denis Saurat, La Religion de Victor Hugo (Paris, 1929), pp. 19-21.

9 Claudius Grillet, La Bible dans Victor Hugo (Paris, 1910), p. 130.

10 Œuvres poétiques complètes (Montreal, 1944), p. 404.

11 Hugo, La Légende des siècles (Paris, 1859), i, viii-ix.

12 Paul Berret, La Légende des siècles de Victor Hugo (Paris, n.d.), pp. 65-89.

13 Buchanan, The Drama of Kings (London, 1871), p. 471.

14 John A. Cassidy, “Robert Buchanan and the Fleshly Controversy,” PMLA, lxvii (March 1952), 65-93.