A Study Of Hardy’s Novels In The Perspective Of Hegel’s Theory Of Tragedy

Thomas Hardy is one of the most important novelists in the history of British literature,whose novels are full of various conflicts.This thesis studies the embodiment of Hegel’s tragic conflict theory in Hardy’s four Wessex novels including The Return of the Native,The Mayor of Casterbridge,Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.Hegel held that the essence of tragic conflict is the conflict between two“universal powers”.In Hardy’s four novels,the collision between two “universal powers” is embodied in the forms of conflict between man and natural world—Eustacia and the Egdon heath in The Return of the Native and Jude and Victorian society in Jude the Obscure;man and man—Henchard and Farfrae in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Eustacia and Clym in The Return of the Native;one and oneself—Tess in Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Sue in Jude the Obscure.The“universal powers” are particularized in different individual shapes in Hardy’s novels,collide and struggle with each other and reach “reconciliation” and unity on a higher level.By studying the embodiment of Hegel’s tragic conflict theory in Hardy’s four Wessex novels,this thesis may to some extent enrich and broaden Hardy’s scholarship.