Book excerpt: There has long been a tendency to regard Thomas Hardy as a great tragic writer and to ignore or underestimate the value of his comic works. This derives no doubt partly from the fact that comedy as an art form has been consistently undervalued ever since Aristotle dealt with it so slightly and so slightingly. It also stems from the evident inability of some readers and critics to allow an artist a wide scope and multiple voices. Thomas Hardy and the Comic Muse discusses the nature of comedy and the various theories that purport to explain or define it, and examines Hardy’s works — novels, short stories, and poetry — in terms of the categories of farce, humour, satire, and wit. It looks at where and why Hardy made use of these forms of comedy, what his historical sources were, and why this side of his work has been so frequently neglected. It also looks at what insights might be offered by Hardy — both directly and indirectly — to answer the difficult but always tantalizing question: what is comedy? The two subjects, Hardy and Comedy, are counterpointed throughout so that they prove to be mutually illuminating.