ABSTRACT
the title page of The Dynasts calls it 'An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon, in Three Parts, Nineteen Acts, & One Hundred & Thirty Scenes'. By emphasizing in this way the sheer bulk of his epic-drama Hardy was letting the reader know at once that this was no mere by-product of the author's earlier concern with Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1880 The Trumpet-Major had dealt with the fears of invasion remembered in Dorset two generations later, and two years after the publication of the novel, when Harpers advertised Hardy's 'Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four' they called it 'Napoleon's Invasion'. Now, however, in The Dynasts, Hardy proposed to range far beyond the limits of a short story or of a novel. By calling his work an epic he announced his determination to try to rival Homer. By calling it a drama he demonstrated his readiness to be compared to Shakespeare. But even these implications fail to mark the full extent of Hardy's design. His was an incredibly ambitious plan, and a careful analysis of the project leaves one amazed that such an undertaking could have been attempted by a frail man over sixty years of age.
