THOMAS HARDY'S THE DYNASTS AS EPIC-DRAMA

Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts is a remarkable achievement, painted with an extraordinary energy and sureness of touch, and based on an extensive, sagacious study of the history of the Napoleonic Wars. Epic drama, for Hardy, is the highest form of art; it is the kind of literature he aspires to originate. For more than three decades he contemplated a large work, a drama on the epic scale, which he devoted his life to its completion. Thus, The Dynasts is what Hardy's entire career tended to, and for him it represents the sublime artistic work and his magnum opus. In addition to Hardy's emphasis on historical and international matters rather than regional interests, he innovates an unusual presentation of his subject which seems a notable literary departure from his previous works. The Dynasts is the native culmination of Hardy's lifelong interest of the ambiguous character of Napoleon and the international events which his ambitions set into motion. The work has an original mixture of epic and drama, poetry and prose, surrealism and realism in a framework of three parts, nineteen acts, and one hundred and thirty-one scenes.