Tess of the D’urberville.pptVIP

Tess of the D’Urberville --A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented Yuan Xuemei Background Knowledge Thomas Hardy(1840-1928) practised architecture in earley years devoted to novel writing in prime time devoted to poetry writing in later years Novels Novels of Character and Environment: Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) Far From the Madding Crowd(1874) The Return of the Native(1878) The Mayor of Casterbridge(1886) The Woodlanders(1887) Tess of the D’Urberville((1891) Jude the Obscure(1896) Novels Romances and Fantasies A Pair of Blue Eyes(1873) The Trumpet-Major(1880) Two on a Tower(1882) A Group of Nobel Dames(1891) The Well-beloved(1897) Novels Novels of Ingenuity Desperate Remedies(1871) The Hand of Ethelberta(1876) A Loadicean (1881) Poetry Harsh criticism of Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D’urberville became so bittered that Hardy gave up novel writing and devoted to poetry entirely. The Dynasts(1904-1908) is an epic drama about the Napoleonic wars. Hardy’s Philosophy 1. A pessimist and fatalist: reading of J. s. Mill, Darwin, Spencer, and Schopenhauer and readings in geology and astronomy. Unable to accept the Bible. The ruthless struggle for survival. Nature not Wordsworthian benevolence but a malignant force of destruction. Hardy’s Philosophy All human efforts seems futile, insignificant, ambition and agonies ludicrously trivial as compared with the incaculable size and age of the universe, mankind as the helpless victim of cosmic design(Schopenhauer and Hartman) Hardy’s Philosophy Sensitive and responsive to huamn sufferings:persons as embodiments of the elemental life force,struggling futily against the forces of heredity snd environment. Nature is a living ,destructive force. Superstition and coincidence strengthen his sense of fatlism. Tess of the D’Urberville The plot : the secduction of a naive girl by a selfish young gentleman, and her eventual trial for murder. Hardy’s sympath with Tess as is indicated by the subtitle, A Pur