The Manipulation Of Schemata In Tess Fo The D' Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy is a most distinguished novelist and poet in Victoria age. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, one of his'Character and Environment'novels, is always perceived as the most outstanding of all his works. In spite of its publication for over 100 years, many researchers are still attracted by its attack against the contemporary values of marriage, religion, morality, and its unique artistic style.Based on Cook's schema theory, the paper conducts a cognitive-linguistic analysis of how the personality, fate and emotional states of the heroine are revealed skillfully by the author. It aims to explain how the different levels of schemata, namely language schemata, text schemata and world schemata, are evoked and refreshed by the discourse and how they help to define the author's cognitive style.Chapter one reviews previous literary studies on Tess of the d'Urbervilles. It also gives an introduction to the organization of the whole paper.Chapter two presents Guy Cook's dynamic view of schemata. He puts forward three types of schema changes, namely, schema refreshing, schema preserving, and schema reinforcing, and three levels of schemata, namely, language schemata, text schemata, and world schemata.The third chapter applies Cook's theory to the analysis of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. It mainly analyzes the schemata evoked by the language features, textual structures and natural images of the novel. The relationship of these schemata is then studied to construct Hardy's unique cognitive style. That is, Hardy presents the personality, fate and emotional states of the heroine not from a single aspect but from various aspects, including the special forms of language, the apparently traditional narrative mode, and metaphors of nature images. Besides, schemata evoked at each level are not isolated but largely dependent on the context, and the ever changing schemata progressively unveil the personality, fate and emotional states of the heroine.The last chapter draws a conclusion and summarizes the major findings and limitations of this paper. It also points out the significance of the cognitive approach to literary analysis.