Literature and Narratives

-By Arya James F.R Leavis in this famous essay which appears in his  The Great Tradition  talks about why he considers  Hard Times  as the best work of Charles Dickens. Right in the beginning he calls this brilliant work which is set in the fictional industrial Coketown a masterpiece. He asserts that  Hard Times  has, of all Dickens’ works, all strength of his genius and it is a completely serious work of art. Leavis says that it is because of the traditional approach to ‘the English novel’ that  Hard Times  did not get the recognition it so deserved. He observes a lot of unexacting expectations from the author by the readers of those times. He says Henry James’  The Europeans  also suffered like  Hard Times  because of these unexacting expectations. The title of the novel confirms Dickens’ inspiration. Usually Dickens’ criticism of the world around him is casual. But in  Hard Times , he has a comprehensive vision of the inhumanities of Victorian England which is represented by Thomas