A Study Of Hardy’s Novels From The Perspective Of Ecocriticism

Thomas Hardy, an important writer in the history of British literature who spanned the19th and20th century, made great chievements in poems and novels. Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess are his representative works.Most of his novels are in the background of Wessex with pleasant scenery and unsophisticated local trait,deducing joys and sorrows, separations and reunions in the countryside.This paper attempts to explore Hardy’s love and care about the nature taking ecological holism as theory lever,for example by Far from the Madding Crowd and The Return of the Nature.It’s going to expound the ecological consciousness in Hardy’s works respectively from the four aspects of the natural description, man and nature,man and man,man himself.This article is divided into five parts.The preface briefly introduces Thomas Hardy and the research status of his works, and explores the value and the realistic meaning of this topic.The second part combs the appearance and development of the ecological criticism theory,and puts forward the ecological holism on this basis.The third part analyzes Far from the Madding Crowd and The Return of the Nature from the aspects of authentic nature and man and nature’s living together in peace with the theory of ecological holism.Thereby it can reflects the ecological thoughts of Hardy.The fourth part deeply investigates the two works from the latitude of social ecology and spiritual ecology with "ecological trichotomy" put forward by Chinese famous ecologist Lu Shuyuan.Thus we can have a comprehensive understanding of the ecological care in Hardy works.The last part mainly analyzes the concrete reasons of Hardy’s ecological consciousness and the deficiencies of his viewpoint.Hardy’s cognition and perception of nature is defective to some extent because of the age and himself.Thus his ecological consciousness has its limits.This paper has studied such limits so as to grasp his ecological consciousness more rationally.We believe it can not only bring the readers with fresh feelings about classic works, but also arouse man’s awareness of environmental protection.