Exploring Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd

This course, Exploring Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, is designed to tell you something about Hardy's background and to introduce you to the pleasures of reading a nineteenth-century novel. Why do we believe in fictional characters and care about what happens to them? You will discover some of the techniques that Hardy uses to achieve an illusion of real people and their relationships in the real world. Through analyzing narrative you will think about who the narrator is, and the importance of the narrative point of view in telling the story, as well as understanding how characterization, the use of dialogue, time and locations work within the novel.