Le liriche di guerra di Thomas Hardy. Immaginari positivi e negativi della guerra.

Abstract: During his lifetime Thomas Hardy showed several times his interest for the theme of war: many war poems are an indication of that. This essay focuses on the poetic production written between 1914 and 1916 and, more specifically, upon the Poems of War and Patriotism, published in the collection Moments of Vision, in 1917. These lyrics can well be considered as a laboratory where the poet manifests his imagery about World War I, towards which one can say he had mixed feelings about. Indeed these poems cover many aspects of war from its effects to its causes to its aftermath, and highlight contrasting attitudes towards war: forms of convinced patriotism sometimes give way to others instead built on a real chauvinism or others more in which a clear rejection of all forms of war is affirmed. From a poetic perspective, these poems could be considered as a lyric manifesto of the state of social crisis and crisis of the subject which is at the origin of individual and fragmentary responses to such questions as national pride, the sense of duty to the nation. Besides, from these poems arises a feeling of discomfort originated from the practices of the first modern war. These are questions that populate and cross Thomas Hardy’s imagery and that connote the poetry of these lyrics, as here we will try to show.