The Analysis of Angel Clare’s Tragedy in Tess of The D’urbervilles
中文摘要：文学作品是现实生活的一面镜子，反映了生活的方方面面。越来越多的学者开始从文学的角度研究一个国家的经济，政治和文化根源。悲剧是小说创作的手法之一。西方早在古希腊时期就有了悲剧创作。悲剧不是简单的艺术形式或艺术技巧，而是对现实社会的特征的再现，它可以通过尖锐、激烈的事件展示令人怜悯、悲痛、同情、哭泣等的情节。英国著名作家托马斯•哈代是维多利亚时期著名的小说家之一。他塑造了许多悲剧人物，展现出各种人物魅力。小说除了给人以命运悲剧庄严凝重以外，还蕴涵了作者深厚的理性主义，蕴涵了对人类历史逻辑矛盾深邃反思的社会悲剧。哈代的悲剧小说《德伯家的苔丝》真实地反映了其当时的社会现实。小说成功地塑造了女主人苔丝的形象，无情地揭露了资产阶级社会虚伪的伦理道德。本文试从男主人公安琪儿•克莱尔的社会背景和人物心理两个方面，探讨导致其悲剧的成因。
关键词：托马斯•哈代悲剧安琪尔•克莱尔
Abstract: Literature is a mirror of real life which can reflect all aspects of people’s lives. More an d more scholars have begun to study a country from the roots of economy, politics and culture. As early as ancient Greece, there were some creations of tragedy. Tragedy is a kind of literary creati on, which is not a simple artistic form or technique but the repeat of real society. It can depict the piteous, sad, di
stressing and sentimental plots by describing some tortuous or complicated events. The British famous writer Thomas Hardy was one of the excellent novelists of the Victorian age. He delineated a lot of characters of tragedies, showing various persons’ enchantment. Besides prov iding the dignity of life tragedy to the readers, the novels contains the profound rationalism of the writer and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles reflected his real society. Hardy succeeded in portraying the image of heroine Tess and revealing the hypocritical ethics and morals of bourgeois society. This paper will d
iscuss the causes of Clare’s tragedy from the hero –Angel Clare’s social background and psycho logy.
Key words: Thomas Hardy, tragedy, Angel Clare
Chapter1 Introduction
Literature is not only an art but also a mirror of real life. When studying a literary work, scholars actually study history. Nowadays an increasing number of scholars have begun to study the histor y of a country’s economic, political and cultural forms from the perspective of literature because thr ough different kinds of literary works, we can see all sorts of feelings such as joy, anger, sorrow a nd various truths. The manifestation of literature is manifold, one of which is tragedy. The writers o
scholars
ften want to show the piteous, sad, distressing and sentimental plots by describing some tortuous or complicated events. In the tragedy, it is inevitable that the heroes or heroines should suffer a s etback or disadvantage, cover themselves in dishonor, experience tribulation or even fail or die tho ugh they have reasonable motivation, wishes, ideal, or passion which may indicate a victory or suc cess. But finally they will either die or get mad. With a bad ending, tragedy often contains a certai n philosophy of life
. There are lots of tragedies in western literature such as Oedipus, Prometheus Bound, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, Faust, etc. And the famous tragedians are also legion like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, etc –Thomas Hardy for one. He was a prolific and excellent writer, publi shing fourteen novels and four volumes of short stories. His works were noted for the intense tragi c spirit and sense of fortune, from which we can feel the atmosphere of tragedy brought by fortun e deeply.
“Tess of the D’urbervilles” is one of the Hardy’s tragedies, a masterpiece which brought him into a number of literary critics notice. It reflected the writer’s real society and its social system and m orals; therefore studying this novel can help us to know about the history of his age. But many pa pers showed that most of critics used to research the writing background from the tragedy of Tess. Many sc
holars have always put emphasis on the tragedy of Tess for a long time. Only a few sch olars made researches for the tragedy of its hero Angel Clare. He was a contradictory unity –he w as bold in struggling with the traditional view but in the meantime he could not break the shackles of feudal ideas. This paper will see the society from this perspective –Angel Clare, the hero’s trag edy and discuss the causes of Clare’s tra gedy from his social background and psychology.
Chapter2 A brief account of Tess of The D’urbervilles
It seems that the fictional works do not concern with the real world. But we know that before th e writers begin to create their works, it can be said that their social experience may be their prima ry material for creation. Some writers created the roles and environments in order to revolt against the worldly prejudice of their ages. These kinds of words are expected to tell people the truth of a soci ety. In many cases, the social background of the novel is the writer’s background. Before an alyzing the roots of Clare’s tragedy, this paper will discuss two aspects of this novel, namely “the writing background” and “the writer and his works” from which w e can see the background of this novel.