Thomas Hardys major novel. Tragic elements

Lucrare de licenta despre Thomas Hardys major novel. Tragic elements
In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy re-discusses the pattern of the classical tragedy combining Aristotelian ideas with modern themes and thus giving a new dimension to the concept itself.

The theme develops within the pattern of the Greek tragedy and emphasizes the fall of a man which is caused by its tragic flaw. The novel intertextualizes Shakespeare's King Lear and as John Paterson pointed out "Hardy here assumes what the literature of tragedy after Shakespeare has not found it easy or possible to assume: the existence of a moral order, an ethical substance, a standard of justice and certitude, in terms of which man's experience can be rendered as the drama of his salvation as well as the drama of his damnation."

And he continues: "Reviving a body of beliefs about man and fate, nature and society that were once the ordinary possessions of the Western imagination, he exploits a wisdom that makes possible the achievement of tragedy in the heroical sense of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare."2

Lucrare de licenta despre Thomas Hardys major novel. Tragic elements

Lucrare de licenta despre Thomas Hardys major novel. Tragic elements
Cuprins

Foreword...................3

Introduction...............4

Chapter I The Mayor of Casterbridge. A Tragedy of Hybris..............13

Chapter II Tess of the D'Urbervilles. A Tragedy of Transition.........31

Chapter III Jude the Obscure. A Psychological Clash...................49

Conclusions................74

Bibliography...............76