Mourning Ethics In Hardy’s Elegy Writing

The modern reflection on mourning is reflected in the development and transformation of English elegy,and it has become an event in the history of elegy development in Thomas Hardy.“Emma poems” is Hardy’s most important elegy works,which showed a spirit of “anti-elegy” and had a profound impact on modern poets in the early 20 th century.In the history of Hardy’s elegy criticism,there has always been a controversial issue,that is,Hardy’s attitude towards mourning,which is also the core issue of this paper.The discussion of this issue in the history of relevant criticism started from the psychoanalytic criticism of Hardy’s elegy,and a new perspective emerged under the reflection of post-modern theoretical discourse on psychoanalytic theory.But in these debates,the literary convention of elegy itself and the moral emotionalism tendency in Hardy’s thought are always ignored.It is precisely for this reason that these controversies ultimately failed to form a clear expression of Hardy’s mourning thoughts,and also failed to successfully evaluate the modern value of Hardy’s mourning thoughts.This paper focuses on the elegy of “Emma poems”,develops a new reading way on the basis of respecting the literary conventions of elegy and Hardy’s moral emotionalism ideological resources,and tries to solve the problems above.The central argument of this paper is that Hardy developed a mourning attitude different from the traditional elegy in the “Emma Poems”-Hardy believed that mourning should not have an end,and the living should always maintain contact with the dead,and thus to remind the ethical responsibility between the self and the other.At the same time,this tendency of mourning also made Hardy to present the political view of mourning for the world war,the Holocaust and the terrorist attacks issued by modern thinkers in the early 20 th century,which has a pioneering and prophetic significance.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,the main part of this paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter explains the mourning cultural background of the whole Victorian society during the period when the “Emma Poems” came into being,and Hardy’s literary response to it.“Emma poems” was created in the early 20 th century,when British society was experiencing the rapid decline of mourning culture.The reason behind it was the damage and collapse of moral emotionalism in this historical period.Under this cultural background of mourning,the writing of “Emma poems” reemphasizes many elements such as perception and emotion,and revives the poetic function of mourning.The second chapter analyzes the perception and emotional mode of “Emma poems”,which is different from the traditional elegy.Under the strong literary inertia,the traditional elegy maintains the literary imagination of the lost pastoral life,while the “Emma Poems” regard the indifferent natural world as the field of spiritual perception,emphasizing the emotional burden of the living.By writing about the invasion and siege of trees,rain,springs,coastline and other natural things to the soul,the “Emma Poems” show the never dissipating emotional memory of reexperience.For Hardy,the best way to preserve the dead is to bravely bear the emotional burden of the living.The third chapter explains how the emotional memory model in “Emma poems” leads to the ethical thinking of mourning.This chapter points out that behind the emotional memory writing of “Emma poems”,there is a memory ethics question for the traditional elegy writing,that is,whether all commemorations are legal? In this regard,Hardy gave a negative answer.In order to resist the possible dissipation or self correction of memory,Hardy wrote strong emotional memory as a stabilizer of memory,and created a Hume like diffuse memory subject.Under this kind of memory writing,Hardy refused the utilitarian mourning.He extended the mourning time infinitely,and established a strong connection between the living and the dead.These two points profoundly subvert the basic position of Freud’s concept of mourning,that is,mourning needs to be ended,and the link with the dead is unhealthy.The fourth chapter gives Hardy’s perception of mourning a position in the history of thought.On the issue of mourning,Hardy transcended the boundary of the issue of moral emotionalism sympathy.Hardy declared the invalidation of sympathy by extending the absolute estrangement between the living and the dead to the relationship between him and me in the life world.While questioning sympathy,Hardy found a new way out,that is,to use the power of mourning itself to reconnect the self with the other.The specific approach is to develop the mourning attitude shown in love poems into the late war poems and endow mourning with public value.Finally,the connection between the self and others cancelled by the death was reconnected by mourning,so Hardy moved towards the political view of mourning conveyed by Butler in Violence,Mourning,Politics: it is possible to live a life centered on mourning.Living in mourning will enable us to realize the need to connect with others,and this bond always reminds us of the ethical responsibility between the self and others.