The diploma thesis is focused on analysis, comparison and interpretation of Thomas Hardy?s literary work, especially on the attitude of characters towards the environment in the chosen ?Wessex novels? by Thomas Hardy. The principle of this work is to contextualize and characterize Hardy?s writings in general, together with his historical background and philosophical inspiration, which influenced his concept of space. The main aim is to point out the importance of the environment in Hardy?s literary work, problems of his protagonists? existence and their tragic fatality stemming for their connection with the place they dwell in. Furthermore, this thesis underlines other, mainly social circumstances that influence characters? lives. Another aim is to concentrate on the development of themes and motifs and to find out how Hardy?s work develops in particular, chronologically ordered novels. Answers to these questions can be found in the fundamental part of the diploma thesis, which is based on literary analysis of particular novels, in which the environment plays the very crucial role.

As one of the most well-known figures of the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill was depicted extensively in journalism, pictures, life-writing and fiction. This thesis draws on a selection from these diverse and underexplored sources to offer a new perspective on Mill’s presence in Victorian cultural and emotional life. It shows how Mill figured in fierce debates about science and culture in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, and how ideas of Mill’s ‘femininity’ were used to both attack and commend him philosophically, politically and personally. Mill’s ‘Saint of Rationalism’ label continues to belie the extent to which he was associated with ideas of passion, sensitivity, tenderness, feeling, and emotion in the nineteenth century. This project explores how such terms were invoked in relation to Mill as a philosopher and politician, but also how they related to readers’ encounters with his works. More than any previous study, this thesis pays close attention to the interaction between verbal and visual depictions, and considers official images and caricatures of Mill alongside written accounts. Though much scholarship emphasises that Mill’s reputation went into decline after his death in 1873 (to be recovered in the late twentieth century), this thesis demonstrates the vitality and diversity of literary engagements with Mill in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It offers case studies of three authors – Thomas Hardy, Mona Caird and Olive Schreiner – and reads both the form and content of their fiction as involved in recognisably Millian experiments in living. Exploring the Millian concepts that figure in novels by Hardy, Caird and Schreiner not only expands the sense of the philosophical context to their writings, but underscores the continued relevance of Mill to discussions of self-development and education, free discussion and intellectual independence. Finally, this thesis suggests ways in which work on representations of Mill could be developed to gain further insight into the cultural history of the philosopher, into interactions between philosophy and literature, and into the nineteenth-century definitions of liberal culture that inform twenty-first century debates.

Thomas Hardy is the only major English novelist to have been a professional architect. In his essay, “Memories of Church Restoration,” written for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (1906), it was clear that, for Hardy, architectural structures preserved the spirit of all those who had created and originally worked and lived within them. By their very presence, then, ancient and medieval buildings were historical artifacts housing the memories of past lives. This intertwining of humans and the built environment became the stuff of Hardy’s novels, short stories, poetry, and essays. Drawing on autobiographical material, including correspondence and notebooks, as well as novels and poetry, this thesis examines the various ways in which Hardy engages with ideas and debates about architecture taking place in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While previous studies have examined the treatment of architecture in Hardy’s fiction, this thesis focuses on key figures in the architectural world and the complex role their ideas play in his work. Hardy explores a combination of ideas from leading architectural thinkers, at times offering an important synthesis to coexisting architectural ideas. I argue that Hardy saw architecture as recording centuries of memory, rooted in an instinctual life that connects humans with the natural world in an intimate way, evoking evolutionary time. In so doing he expanded the meaning of the “architectural” well beyond the confines of medievalist or classical ideas, or debates sparked by architects and critics such as A.W.N. Pugin and John Ruskin and architecture, in its broadest definition, acts as a metaphor for the way the past lives on in the present, undergoing continual processes of change; for destruction and decay; and for the way buildings undergo natural processes. The nexus of architectural ideas also allows Hardy to respond to questions of the role of art in relation to society and social communities.

A commonplace among Hardy critics is that as a young man Hardy lost his Christian faith and entered a serious religious disillusionment. The mainstream of Hardy criticism has followed the general consensus that Hardy suffered keenly as a result of this experience and looked back on Christianity with poignant nostalgia. If his view is not purely nostalgic, traditional criticism has insisted, then it seems at worst only ambivalent. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that Hardy's attitude toward Christianity as revealed in his novels is not only not ambiguous, but, as a matter of fact, is specifically anti-Christian, often to the point of vehemence; that his treatment of various components of Christianity in his novels is aggressively anti-Christian; and that the feeling is so pronounced that the novels may be read as anti-Christian propagandistic tracts. This dissertation evaluates Hardy's cynical view of and attack on Christianity by examining his treatment of its symbols, such as its architecture, and its practitioners, both clergy and laity. Furthermore, since Hardy's attitude is shown not only in specific comments and particular situations but also in general tone, attention is directed toward the pervasive irony with which Hardy regards the entire panoply of Christianity. Although a few short stories and poems considered particularly relevant receive passing attention, this study is restricted primarily to a consideration of Hardy's fourteen novels. Moreover, this study notes the lack of continuity of development or logical intensification of Hardy's attitude toward Christianity during the twenty-four years spanning the time between the publication of his first novel, Desperate Remedies, in 1871 and the publication of his last novel, Jude the Obscure, in 1895.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第22131号 / 人博第914号 / 新制||人||218(附属図書館) / 2019||人博||914(吉田南総合図書館) / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生文明学専攻 / (主査)教授 水野 眞理, 教授 桂山 康司, 准教授 池田 寛子, 教授 金子 幸男 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DGAM

Many female characters in Thomas Hardy’s novels clearly illustrate one of the Victorian stereotypes of women: the proper, submissive housewife or the rebellious, independent dreamer. Hardy does not demonstrate how women should be, but rather how society pressures women to conform to the accepted image. Hardy progresses from subtly criticizing society, as seen in The Return of the Native and The Woodlanders, to overtly condemning gender roles and marriage in Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. The characters of Thomasin, Mrs. Yeobright, and Grace Melbury illustrate those who submit to society’s expectations; and Eustacia Vye, Felice Charmond, Tess Durbyfield, Sue Bridehead, and Arabella Donn illustrate the stereotypical seductress. Hardy’s female characters seem to experience especially harsh or condemning circumstances due to the social expectations placed upon them. These unpleasant events earn readers’ sympathy and work to subvert the traditional limiting views of women.

This dissertation explores the subject of heredity and its novelistic treatment c. 1850-1900. Though hereditary phenomena had long been incorporated into literary works, heredity acquired an unprecedented significance with Darwin’s theory of evolution. It became a central fact of life, generating both fascination and fear, but its exact workings remained unknown until the turn of the century. This left novelists some experimental leeway in creating fictional universes and characters in accordance with the nascent naturalistic worldview and in struggling with its philosophical implications. While work on nineteenth-century literature and science has focused significantly on evolution, I demonstrate that heredity is a more immediate human concern and is more intuitive to the form of the novel. The works considered here by George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Thomas Hardy grapple with an increasingly deterministic view of biology but also with other forms of inheritance, for most of the conditions that constitute and determine our lives are inherited. Chapter one discusses how the metaphor of inheritance became a powerful tool for portraying the complexities of life in a post-theological age. This dissertation is grounded in the history of science, and, beyond the common language shared between science, philosophy, and literature, I examine the role of narrative in the study of heredity, particularly in medical case histories, which formed an early point of contact with the novel. Chapter two is on Eliot’s treatment of the inextricable workings of legal, cultural, and biological inheritance in The Mill on the Floss, showing how the mismatch between theory and reality regarding these matters demoralizes the novel’s protagonists and inhibits their development. Chapter three contextualizes The Picture of Dorian Gray in the history of art and science, reading Dorian’s portrait as a device suggestive of metaphysical inheritance and the disruption of personal development, and the ancestral portraits in Dorian’s gallery as indications of the biological heredity that drives his self-destruction. Chapter four looks at Hardy’s technique of genealogical narrative and overdetermination in Tess of the d’Urbervilles and the novel’s engagement with debates over the value of pedigree and the pessimistic view of determinism at the century’s end. / 2020-09-29T00:00:00Z

In Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles a relationship exists between the symbolical sacrifice of Tess at Stonehenge and her association with fertility, ritual, and mythic cycles of seasonal death and rebirth. Because Hardy associates Tess with fertility, reproductive power, and seasonal change, she personifies nature and closely resembles the earth mother goddess Demeter. Ritual is evident in her participation in the May-Day club revel, in her intended suicide under the mistletoe, and in her manner of killing Alec d1Urberville. Myth cycle culminates with a fertility ritual in the powerful sacrificial incident at Stonehenge, for, although Tess physically dies at Wintoncester, she symbolically dies at Stonehenge. Following her execution, the significance of her symbolic death at Stonehenge becomes apparent in her rebirth in 'Liza-Lu, In the Demeter-Persephone myth, two anthropomorphic entities, the mother and the maiden, enact the single phenomenon of organic nature--the principle of life seen in the seasonal growth of vegetation. Tess, then, as mother symbolizes the end of the old year's crops, while 'Liza-Lu as maiden signifies the fructification of Tess's seed in the burgeoning fertility of the new year. By being reborn in 'Liza-Lu, Tess thus completes the mythic pattern of seasonal changes.

This study examines the forces which shaped the main character--Tess Durbeyfield--in Hardy's novel in terms of the effects which her alcoholic family had upon her mental and emotional potential and which ultimately become the determining factors in her self-destruction. Using the elements and patterns set forth in the literature regarding the dynamics of the alcoholic family, I attempt to show that Hardy's novel may best be understood as the story of a woman whose life and destiny are controlled by the consequences of her father's alcoholism. This interpretation seems to account best for many elements of the novel, such as Tess's destruction, and provides a rich appreciation of Hardy's technique and vision.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the concept of a godless universe governed by a consciousless and conscienceless Immanent Will in Hardy's poetry is an ineluctable outcome, given the expanded scientific knowledge of the nineteenth century, of the pantheistic views of the English Romantic poets. The purpose is accomplished by tracing characteristically Romantic attitudes through the representative poetry of the early Victorian period and in Hardy's poetry. The first chapter is a brief introduction. Chapter II surveys major Romantic themes, illustrating them in Wordsworth's poetry. Chapter III treats the decline of the Romantic vision in the poetry of Tennyson and Arnold. Hardy's views and the Victorian poets' influence are the subject of Chapter IV. Chapter V demonstrates Wordsworth's influence on Hardy in several areas.