The Aesthetic Values Of Hardy's Tragic Fiction

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) is regarded as an internationally eminent novelist and poet. Of all his fictions, Jude the Obscure is the last but maybe the finest, being called his"swan song". Since its controversial appearance in 1896, it has provoked great repercussions by readers and literary critics through the entire world. This thesis attempts to discuss Thomas Hardy's tragic vision of life, as is illustrated in Jude the Obscure and Hardy's unique handling and the interpretation of the tragic fate of the titular character, and most importantly the aesthetic values embodied in this novel.The structure of the thesis goes as follows. The first chapter explores into Hardy's pilgrimage to the maturity of tragic fiction. By transplanting the ideas of the classical tragic drama into the forms of modern novel, Hardy manages to find the perfect form of tragic fiction to enounce his artistic principles to exteriorize the tragic experience to purge people's fear and pity. Hardy's tragic vision is heterogeneous in its sources of influences and there are mainly two: one is the real life observation and the other is the reading of classical tragedies and the Holy Bible. Thus Hardy presents both similarities and differences from the classical tragedies. Hence he is called the inheritor and innovator.The second chapter focuses on Hardy's masterpiece Jude the Obscure to enlighten his aesthetic principles on the art of tragedy. By exploring into the predicaments of Jude, this part is meant to catch the people's sense of tragedy and ignite the imagination of the readers to feel the pains of existence. His truthful delineation of the portrait of Jude reveals the fact that a flawed personality is an important source of people's tragic fate. Therefore the focus is shifted to view from different perspectives of the conflicts between people and environment, between man and his selfhood, and then between flesh and spirit in the third chapter. By analyzing the external and internal conflicts embodied in the character of Jude, the essence of Hardy's pessimism emerges to the surface, with the most tragic and the most realistic aspect of human life demonstrated to the full extent convincingly. Hardy manages to get the readers feel painfully the helplessness and insignificance in living in the chaos of a Godless world.The last chapter spotlights the artistic style of Hardy, with the emphasis on the narrative and descriptive techniques employed by Hardy in contributing to the tragic effects taking Jude as the typical example, using the unification of characters, recognition, reversal and symbols. Hardy's smart handling with these techniques of classical drama and modern novel shows again that he inherits as well as initiates the modern tragic fiction.Based on the above detailed analyses, it could be safely argued that Hardy is a great tragedian writing in the form of fiction and a profound realistic novelist in thinking in the vein of tragedy. Jude the Obscure could be a classical case to be studied to interpret Thomas Hardy's outstanding art in the creation of tragedies and aesthetic principles on novel writing.