| As a popular research paradigm,trauma theory started from the clinical medicine which was relevant to Freud's psychoanalysis and the trauma caused by industrial accidents in the Victorian era in the nineteenth century.Later,trauma theory was expanded into various fields like literature,cultural study,anthropology and sociology.In the recent one or two centuries,"trauma literature" has been gradually brought to the public's attention and thus a research wave upsurges.This thesis will rely on trauma theory and the relevant psychoanalysis theory by Sigmund Freud,and take Thomas Hardy's late works as research texts,such as Tess of the D'Urbervilles,Jude the Obscure and several "Emma poems",to explore the traumatic motif displayed in these works.Many scholars believed that compared with the previous works,Hardy's late works did not stress the storyline,but highlighted characters' psychology description.This change in Hardy's writing was taken as evidence by the scholars to prove pessimism aggravation in Hardy's thought,which,however,was not persuasive enough to label Hardy as a complete pessimist.The author in this thesis argued that Hardy's late works belong to trauma literature and they reveal various traumas hidden behind the civilization and prosperity in Victorian era,such as sexual violence,cultural trauma and psychological trauma.Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure mainly disclosed sexual trauma and cultural trauma respectively,while the trauma of love was embodied in both.Sexual violence and cultural trauma were representative in Victorian era when Hardy lived,and both of them were not only suffered individual trauma,but the collective.The "Emma Poems" embody Hardy's psychological trauma in his late life because of Emma's death.This thesis is divided into five chapters,to analyze the traumatic motif,uncured trauma in Hardy's late works.Chapter One is the introduction,consisting of four parts.It starts with a brief but comprehensive introduction to the author Hardy and his late works,at the same time points out the division of the early,middle and late stage in Hardy's writing by authoritative scholars.The second part is literature review about Hardy's late works,followed by the last two parts,theoretical framework structure and research significance.Chapter Two concentrates on the traumatic motif in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.It consists of three parts:the heroine Tess and her sexual violence and love trauma,representation of post-traumatic syndromes,and the effort to recover from trauma.Chapter Three focuses on the traumatic motif in Jude the Obscure,in which the author will take the protagonist Jude as the case study,to analyze his cultural trauma and love trauma,traumatic syndromes and his effort to gain recovery.Chapter Four discusses the traumatic motif in the "Emma Poems".The author will take Hardy himself in poems as the case study to explore Hardy's psychological trauma caused by the bereavement of Emma,his post-traumatic syndromes and ways to seek recovery.Chapter Five is the conclusion.Through the analysis mentioned above,a conclusion was drawn that living in the transformation period at the turn of the century,Hardy was not only a witness of the traumatic visage,but also a traumatized victim.Hardy highlighted the uncured trauma through creating traumatic characters skillfully,representing the post-traumatic syndromes and pointing out methods to seek recovery.However,restricted by the era,the traumatized characters including Hardy himself did not recover from their trauma,but it will never impair Hardy's achievements in and contribution to trauma literature.The motif of the uncured trauma in Hardy's late works is far less enough to be evidence to define Hardy as a pure pessimist or fatalist.Hardy was intended to take tragedy as the best carrier to display the uncured trauma,to reflect the real social situation in that special era and to stimulate readers to ponder over and explore new methods for the uncured trauma. |
PDF Full Text Request