| Thomas Hardy is an outstanding native writer in the 19th century in England. His famous fiction all take his hometown Dorset County, located in the southwest of England, as the prototype which creates a "Wessex world". Thus this series of works are called "Wessex fiction", which are also named as "Novels of Character and Environment" by Hardy himself. These works give a vivid illustration of the local language, customs and life mode as well as the effects of social and historical changes to the fate of the folks, which form a unique and impressive style of creation in the history of English literature. Wessex fiction has drawn the attention of lots of researchers at home and abroad by their fascinating features, and the studies of these novels has been deep and productive. However, most of these researches are confined in the circle of literature from the angle of pure literary critics.This thesis will apply the theory of conceptual metaphor from cognitive linguistics to the analysis of Hardy's "Wessex fiction", in order to dig out the deep connotation of the series of Wessex works as well as the mind style and creation mode of Hardy. Hardy's Wessex Fiction generally use conceptual metaphor in a macro way to explain, to render and to maintain the theme generally, which mainly represents in the irresistibility of fate and the power of nature as well as the projection between human-beings and nature. This kind of metaphorical model plays an important part in the creation and form of Hardy's mind and language style, for the thematic metaphors go through the works and become the lead wire of the plots and the hints of the fate of the characters. This kind of metaphorical mode also gives adsorptive power to the readers and a deep impression of the series of his works.This thesis takes the representative Wessex fiction the Return of the Native as a point cut under the framework of megametaphor, in which Hardy describes the back ground Egdon heath, which is not only taken as the back ground of the novel, but also can explain and decide the character and fate of the characters. To different characters, Egdon heath has different feature of metaphors. The heroine Eustacia struggled and fought for escaping from the heath, but at last she was not able to change her fate to be swallowed by the heath, to her, Egdon heath is the curse; the hero Clym is eager to go back the heath, settle down and get on with his pursuit, to him, Egdon heath is the dream. As to local dwellers like Thomasin and Venn, what Egdon heath brings them is the sense of security, it is home. This thesis try to proclaim of the immanent will contained in nature to the characters and the hint of their destiny by analyzing the multiple metaphors of the Egdon heath, in order to dig the inner relationship between environment and character as well as hardy's philosophy of life and thoughts of creation.On the basis, a further case study will be conducted on the megametaphors in other Wessex Fiction, as to illustrate different projection of source domains on the target domain Wessex in different period of creation by Hardy, from which the development of Hardy's mind style is embodied. The changes from the early idealism to realism and the final transcendentalism are well contained in the thematic metaphors of Wessex Fiction. A meditation of the relationship between nature, environment and the destiny of human-beings is wished to be aroused during the exploration of Hardy's mind style and creation mode. |
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