Ironies In The Scenery Description In Hardy's The Return Of The Native And Tess Of The D'Urbervilles

In this paper, the author explores three forms of irony, situational irony, dramatic irony and cosmic irony in the scenery description in Hardy's two novels, The Return of the Native and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, from the level of language and the level of narrative discourse.In The Return of the Native, two conflicting views are perceived on the relations between man and nature throughout the whole novel. One view is that man and nature are harmonious, and the other is hostile. These two views are the basis for the different forms of ironies in the story.In Tess of D'Urbervilles, the basis for the different forms of ironies is the contrast between Tess's projecting too much emotion into nature and the truth that nature is indifferent but dominant to human. Hardy's emphasis on the quality of the emotional aspects actually gains much sympathy of the reader for Tess and thus makes the ironies bitterer in effect.