The Return of the Native | The Buried Giant of Egdon Heath: An Archeology of Folklore in The Return of the Native
Fleishman is an American educator who has
written extensively on the English novel. In the following
excerpt, he analyzes the nature of Egdon
Heath.
One would search long for a commentator on The Return of the Native who has failed to locate the story of Clym Yeobright and Eustacia Vye in the elaborated space of its landscape. Still it may be said that Egdon Heath has not been recognized as a figure in its own right—in both narrative senses of “figure,” as person and as trope. One of the clos- est observers of the novel, John Paterson, has listed [in his essay “The ‘Poetics’ of The Return of the Native”] some of the heath’s associations: “ . . . it is a stage grand enough to bear the weight of gods and...
[The entire page is 4005 words long]
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