Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedPaula Byrne: belief
11 Dec 2024 Conversations with Tyler Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth
“I think “There’s a divinity that rough-hews our ends, shape them as you will,” that sense of — I’m thinking again of Tess here as well — the idea that the gods are peevish.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Paula Byrne
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 11 Dec 2024
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…In your readings, what do you take to be the primary Shakespearean element in Hardy, just subjectively? I think “There’s a divinity that rough-hews our ends, shape them as you will,” that sense of — I’m thinking again of Tess here as well — the idea that the gods are peevish. They’ve got a plan, and they don’t really care, and that they’re just going to move the pieces of chess on the board. I think of King Lear as well on that, on the heath. I think that sense of fatalism, that sense that almost there’s no free will . . . What could Tess do? There’s nothing she could do because the gods have got a plan. That sense of providence, that is really deeply Shakespearean in Shakespeare’s very dark period, I have to say. As you point out, Hardy never really stopped working until he had to. How good is the unknown Hardy? It seems to me everyone reads the same few novels. What do you recommend from the rest?…
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