The Carnival Of Refusing Loneliness: A Comparative Study On Thomas Hardy's The Mayor Of Casterbridge And Jia Pingwa's Turbulence

The patriarchal system of the rural society is bound to extinguish under the influence of the industrialization and urbanization. And the radical social transitional era is the socio-historical background for Jia Pingwa's "Shangzhou" novels and Thomas Hardy's "Wessex" novels. Both the novelists have expressed their realistic care for the poverty, discontent, and hopelessness of the country people in their provincial novels.Based upon Bakhtin's Carnival Poetics and The Theory of the Novel, this dissertation tries to elucidate the realistic care of Jia and Hardy through a comparative study on Jia's Turbulence and Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. Comparative perspectives are the investigation on socio-historical and cultural backgrounds, the multi-accentual discourses analysis, and the coronate and de-coronate narrative structures. In addition, the changes of the integrity in idyllic Chronotope of the provincial novel are also studied to elaborate the populism of their realistic care. The dissertation makes a tentative suggestion that there is a similar carnivalized plot construction in both novels.Therefore, it might be concluded that not only Dialogism and Grotesque but also the carnivalized plot through which the two novelists voice out their realistic care and critique on the social reality could represent the Carnivalesque of the novel.