"A delightful place to be buried in": Representations of Cornwall in Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes.

This article investigates the significance of the Cornish setting in Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes. Given a long tradition of marginalizing the region in literary and cultural histories, Hardy's use of Cornwall in his writing is more than just an incidental product of his personal experiences. This analysis illuminates Cornwall's significance in the Victorian popular imagination as a seemingly barbarous, uncivilized space, arguing that Hardy's familiarity with a haunted Cornwall influences his use of Gothic tropes in the novel. Hardy's Cornwall is a distinct region with a distinct history, part of but separate from England. An understanding of contemporaneous cultural changes in Cornwall at the time--with which Hardy would have been familiar--enriches and informs our understanding of the author's use of genre and regionality in this novel and in his wider oeuvre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]