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This study was prompted by the belief that the importance of the regionalism in Thomas Hardy's novels has been overlooked by recent critics and that no comprehensive study of the effect of regionalism on his novels has been made. A main purpose of this thesis is to examine Hardy's method of adapting his region to his universal themes. The second chapter illustrates Hardy's connection with Wessex and the influence of the region upon Hardy's conception of the novel, his style, his range as a writer, his temperament, and his philosophy. The third chapter considers his themes, and, concluding that they are mainly universal in nature, studies his method of giving universality to his setting and characters. It also contains an examination of Hardy's only regional theme - the agricultural theme. The fourth chapter considers the relationship between universal causes and regional causes in the plots of the Wessex novels and concludes that Hardy is a true regional writer, not only because his characters depend for their living upon the region, but also because many of his plots turn around regional characteristics. A study of the three classes of characters - the outsiders, the major regional characters, and the rustics - in relation to the region and the universe completes this consideration of Hardy's use of his region in his novels. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Hardy's novels draw on his knowledge of rural life in the nineteenth century; the effects of the agricultural depression form part of his material. Similarly, Darwinian thought affects his response to man and nature. Neither the subject-matter nor the philosophy, however, accounts for Hardy's changing attitude to his heroes and heroines who face consistently similar predicaments. This thesis accounts for such change in terms of Hardy's recognition that the old-world values of community life were inadequate for modern needs. Accordingly, he taught himself to accept the individual, even when he finds himself outside the established order, as the spearhead of moral improvement. Hardy derived a sense of security from the rural way of life portrayed in his early novels. Ancient customs are perpetuated in closely-knit communities. Work defines purpose. True love is rewarded. Life is peaceful and harmonious. Hardy acknowledges a possible source of danger in passivity of temperament and in the social pretensions of his women, but these are only possible dangers and the idyll triumphs. In his middle novels, Hardy pays more attention to the changes that were taking place around him, and he reevaluates the strength and worth of the old-world values in the light of more modern alternatives. These novels are described as experimental because Hardy’s attitude to the new social orders and their values is ambivalent. Here, however, and in three major late novels, Hardy describes the rural way of life as benighted and inadequate, unable to survive in the face of change. Consistently now a realistic ending brings defeat to the rustic hero and heroine. But in contrast to his admission of defeat for the old communities, Hardy learns to value the worth of the individual who flouts convention and community ties and evolves his own purposes in life. In early novels these men are the anti-heroes. In his last novels, Hardy studies them more closely. His antipathy gives way to admiration, and the anti-hero of his first novels, who stands outside the settled community, becomes the hero of his last. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure, the four novels often referred to as Hardy's 'major' fiction, display an extraordinarily unified vision of life. This thesis is an attempt to analyze the thematic material common to these four novels through an examination of the poetic techniques—imagery and symbolism— which Hardy uses to enhance and amplify his explicit comments. Patterns of contrast and conflict are basic to the structure of each of these four novels. The conflict which comprises the major theme of the works is developed on both external and internal levels. Externally, the conflict occurs between two worlds which Hardy establishes in the Wessex novels: the stable, traditional world of the peasant, and the uneasy, ever-changing world of modern, urban society. There are two groups of flat, non-developing characters in the novels, one for each of the two separate worlds which Hardy creates. They typify the values of the two worlds, functioning as choric groups speaking from opposed points of view. Most characters in the novels can be linked to one or the other of these two types by criteria such as their attitude toward religion, education, or the mechanization of life, and, more especially, their reactions to alcohol and musical rhythm, both of which act in these novels as touchstones to release the subconscious. Internally, the conflict occurs in major characters who, because of their mixed backgrounds, feel allegiance to the values of both these worlds. The leading character in each of these four novels is cleft by a deep inner schism: he has a conscious ambition or quest, usually of an idealistic nature; at the same time he feels the dark pull of the subconscious. Instinctual needs rise from the subconscious to betray his conscious purposes. The conflict is the universal one between spirit and flesh. Hardy's vision is both consistent and developing. In the four novels discussed, the same conflict between man's conscious striving after the ideal and his deep, subconscious needs prevails. But Hardy's understanding of the nature of this split in the human psyche grows, and his mode of rendering it evolves from a poetic, seemingly unconscious presentation toward increasingly explicit statement of the problem. As his perception develops, the key characters acquire more and more self-knowledge, progressing from the naivety which characterizes Clym Yeobright even at the end of The Return of the Native to the mature and penetrating appreciation of the human dilemma which Jude finally achieves. Jude the Obscure represents a natural culmination of Hardy's novel-writing career, for it contains a full and explicit statement of the problem which Hardy has been exploring in these novels. He could scarcely have said more without becoming didactic. Of all the characters in these four novels Jude Fawley is the most significant thematically, for he achieves the greatest breadth of vision, the fullest understanding of the inner conflict in man which is the central theme of Hardy's fiction. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Th. 3e cycle--Etud. anglophones--Grenoble 3, 1986.

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