Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) set Jude the Obscure and much of his other writings in the semi-imaginary region of Wessex in the south and southwest of England, offering through his writings representations of regional folklore, customs, myth, and ritual. Zeitler (English, Texas Southern U.) examines Hardy's Wessex within the context of the then emerging discipline of anthropology in order to show how this aspect of Hardy's novelistic achievements were less shaped by notions of traditionalism, as many commentators hold, but instead were deeply connected to and shaped by the modern methods and ideas of the new science. Under the Greenwood Tree is shown to represent culture as a "complex whole" in a similar manner as Edward Tyler's anthropological Primitive Culture; The Return of the Native is examined in terms of its themes of rituals of fertility, death, and resurrection; and Jude the Obscure is presented as a narrative of the decline of mythopoetic culture and alienation from the land. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)