From the fossil to the specter or the drift of knowledge in Thomas Hardy’s works

Miranda: Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone

关键词: community;    culture;    fossil;    myth;    nature;    petrification;   

DOI  :  10.4000/miranda.605

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Thomas Hardy was deeply influenced by the science of his day, including the theory of evolution, and his work applies Darwinism to Wessex. Hardy’s novels are full of fossils (whether they be geological or anthropological, human, social and cultural fossils). He was fascinated with decline as opposed to all forms of survivals until, in The Dynasts, Hardy’s fossils become specters. In the novels, all the characters who stand for outdated human goodness are stoned to death and turned into fossils; water dries out, at the end of Jude the Obscure or when Tess dies symbolically on the Stone of Sacrifice at Stonehenge. This paper will analyze the drift towards death in terms of petrification, the literary legacy of Darwinian rhetoric.

【 授权许可】

Unknown