Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. In a post-Nietzschean world, it has become difficult to take for granted the validity of absolute truths because modern philosophy has radicalized the ontological and epistemological implications of human knowledge. Poststructuralist theory proceeds to shed light on this "crisis of representation", that is the rupture in the act of signification. From this vantage point, Thomas Hardy's poetry lends itself better for Deconstructionist analysis as it lays bare this problematic relation between language and truth, sign and referent. The linguistic and semantic instabilities and convulsions in Hardy's poetry unravel a sense of anxiety against the backdrop of a universe that works by accidents and random chances. A brief trajectory of the concept of the linguistic sign will prepare the ground for a thorough discussion of the idea of linguistic crisis and crisis of representation.