论苔丝悲剧的成因(2)
He was deeply influenced by Darwins’The Origin of Species and Spencer’s The First Principle; he accepted the idea of survival the fittest and believed that man’s fate is predeterminedly tragic, driven by a combined force of “nature” both inside and outside. The natural environment is shown as some mysterious supernatural force, which is very powerful.
Hardy is famous for his tragic novels. What is tragedy? Aristotle, in the Poetics defines it as: “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions”(Beijing People’s Literature Publishing House,1982,19). Tragic consciousness is the soul of tragedy, is the mapping of human suffering and experience. Hardy’s tragic consciousness mainly comes from two aspects: On the one hand, it can be traced back to the living environment of Hardy in the early years. Hardy grew up in the English countryside where pervaded dense fatalism, so the view of fatalism directly affected his creation; On the other hand, Hardy’s tragic consciousness from his extreme disappointment of the capitalist system. He saw the darkness of the society, but he didn't find a guide for people to out of the difficult situation, the only thing what he could do was to watch people struggling in pain. With the pessimism and disappointment he had to resort to the ancient Greek view of fate. In Hardy’s view, the universe and society is a stage of great tragedy, and the tragedy is a kind of rule. Happiness is only the occasional episode of the tragic drama; human beings are doomed to unfortunate.
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