Includes bibliographical references.

Section I Critical Perspectives on Fiction 1. The 'Idiot' in Wordsworth and Hardy /Sobha Chattopadhyay -- 2. Hardy's Tragic Character : 'The Children of Light' /Usha Walters Kishore -- 3. The Quest for Self-identity in Thomas Hardy with Special Reference to his Novel The Return of the Native /Vinod Kumar Maheswari -- 4. Egdon as Psycho-space /Suman Jana -- 5. Thomas Hardy's Egdon Heath and Naguib Mahfouz's ZuqÈq Al-Midaqq : A Comparative Study of the Protagonist /Ayyoub M.A. Othman -- 6. A Mother-Obsessed Son /S.M. Chanda -- 7. 'Motherhood' in The Mayor of Casterbridge : A Feminist Reading /Sneha Mishra -- 8. Hardy's Women : A Feminist View /Santosh Chakrabarti -- 9. A Fresh Look at Thomas Hardy's Henchard /Subha Tiwari -- 10 . Tess of the d'Urbervilles : Hardy's Vision of Life /S.P. Swain -- 11. Hardy's Poetic Vision in Tess of the d'Urbervilles /Dipak Jyoti Baruah -- 12. The Problem of Love and Marriage in Jude, the Obscure /Basavaraj Naikar -- 13. Hardy-Pierston : The Breakdown of Fiction /Rama Kundu ---- Section II Critical Perspectives on Poetry 14. Thomas Hardy as a War-Poet /Mohit K. Ray -- 15. Thomas Hardy and the Aesthetics of Dialecticism /Ranjan Ghosh -- 16. Hardy and Housman : A Comparative Study /Mallikarjun Patil -- 17. 'The Weeping Woman of Calvaria' : Demeter : Tryphena /Rama Kundu -- 18. The Poetic Corpus of Thomas Hardy : An Evaluation /C.L. Khatri ---- Section III An Overview of Hardy's life and Works 19. Thomas Hardy's Life and Works : An Overview /T.M.J. Indra Mohan