Music In Thomas Hardy’s Novels

Thomas Hardy was an outstanding English novelist and poet in the nineteenth century. In his lifetime, he wrote altogether fourteen novels, four collections of short stories, eight books of poetry and two volumes of drama. In the history of English novels, Hardy was unique; at the hearts of readers and researchers, Hardy possessed various styles and attributes. Researchers study Hardy’s works mainly from two aspects:his creative thoughts and the characteristics of his works. The former includes his pessimism, fatalism, philosophy and religious thoughts, modernism, and the latter includes plots, settings, characterization, narration and so on. However, there is one aspect comparatively neglected by most critics---he musical side of Hardy. Actually, Hardy brought his passion for music into his works and made them musical and poetic. It is a great pity that researchers seldom notice that. Scholarly study on this aspect, if any, is far from adequate. Therefore, the present thesis tries to conduct a comprehensive and systemic study of the music in Hardy’s novels.The thesis aims at investigating the aspects that are related to music in Thomas Hardy’s novels. In order to achieve this aim, the present thesis bases its study on Hardy’s many novels and short stories. The whole structure of this thesis is as following. The Introduction analyzes the close relationship between Thomas Hardy and music, based on a brief survey of Thomas Hardy’s life and his works. It also provides a review of previous studies on this respect of Hardy scholarship. Chapters Two, Three, Four, and Five form the main body of the present study. Chapter Two will discuss the background music in his novels and its functions. The background music includes the sounds of nature and the ballads. Chapter Three will discuss How Hardy used music in characterization. Chapter Four will discuss the relationship between music and the structure of Hardy’s novels. The author will try to explain how Hardy structured his novels drawing his knowledge and skills of music. Chapter Five will discuss the relationship between music and the themes of Hardy’s novels. Chapter Six will be the conclusion of the thesis. In this part, the author will summarize the thesis briefly and point out the significance of music in Thomas Hardy’s novels.