Hardy, Robert

Robert (Rob) Hardy studied for his B.A. at Cambridge University and for his M.A. and Ph.D. at Cardiff University. After working as Assistant Principal for Higher Education at the Bournemouth and Poole College he taught for the Open University and at Bournemouth University. Most recently he has taught in China for two years – at Hainan Normal University and Shanghai International Studies University.

Men’s Yearning Anger Toward Women in the Writings of D.h. Lawrence, Dion Fortune, and Ted Hughes: The Battle Between Jehovah and the Great Goddess

2015 1-4955-0286-4
A new narrative on the writers who paved the way for the modern goddess movements. Utilizing themes of both the occult and magic as well exposing previously undiscovered parallels between the three writers, this book identifies how the advent of the feminine divine enabled men to confront their woman centered rage through embracing a modern form of goddess worship in order to soothe their psychological wounds.

This book locates a literary study of the goddess in Lawrence, Fortune and Hughes within a narrative in which some modern men try to confront their yearning anger toward women by embracing goddess religion. The author argues that his chosen writers each helped this narrative to emerge, The book (a) offers Lawrence readers a new angle on his preoccupation with the goddess; (b) introduces Dion Fortune (virtually unknown outside her cult following) as an important twentieth century writer on marginality and sexuality; and (c) shows how Ted Hughes’ narratives of the suffering goddess (in Gaudete and Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being especially) relate forwards to his own Birthday Letters and backwards to Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The author also takes magic and the occult as a theme linking the three writers. In doing so he aspires to place his book in the company of other texts which have also taken the occult in modern literature for their subject.

Psychological and Religious Narratives in Iris Murdoch’s Fiction

2000 0-7734-7570-2
This study explores the religious narratives woven into Murdoch’s work alongside the psychological ones. It traces the influence of specific psychoanalytic texts on her work and shows that Freud and Jung, who both wrote a great deal on religion, are useful to understanding more than just Murdoch’s portrayal of the psychological side of the self.