Types of Obscurity in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure and ...

Damascus University Journal, Vol.28 No.1, 2012Sabbar S. Sultandifferent manifestations. Such interpretations of the same topic drawupon the fact that ,' Every writer and artist as well as every reader has hisown psychology, his special family background, his own age with its ownconcerns'(Myers xiii).Indeed this is the crux of the matter in the presentstudy as each writer views and presents his topic differently andeventually creates his own 'obscurity' which stems from differentintellectual and cultural perceptions. However, the titles of the two novelsin question written by writers of different cultural, intellectual and artisticorientations( the British Thomas Hardy(1840-1928) and the Frenchphenomenologist, Maurice Blanchot (1909-2003) foreground this ideaand eventually drive scholars to investigate this type of obscurity whichqualifies the disposition and nature of the two protagonists (Jude andThomas).As such, the best approach in dealing with this elusive topic isto figure out this element in both novels, the meanings intended by theauthors and those projected by the readers so that the explicit and implicitlevels of meanings and insinuations in both texts will be shown. This taskcan be attained through a close reading of the texts in order to verify thesuccess or failure of the authors in their original plans and virtualimplementation.Manifestations of ' Obscurity' in Jude the ObscureThomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1895) is a very good example andfertile field for the contemporary theory of reading or reception of thetext put in vogue by Iser, Jaus, Fish, Holland, Ingarden and others. Onereason is the ever-increasing chasm between the author's intention and thereader's intentionality. It is representative of what the two New Critics,W.K.Wimsatt and Monroe Breadsley call "The Intentional Fallacy"(1946) in that what the author had in mind does not correspond with whatis actually stated on paper, the final artistic achievement as will be shownin due course. The novel has succeeded in arousing such controversy anddisagreement among critics and fellow-writers that the author has foundhimself forced to do two things: defend this ill-fated book vehementlyand at the same time renounce the act of novel-writing altogether andshift to poetry. The arguments raised by the author are not alwaysdistracting or unwelcome as the New Critics keep emphasizing. On the115