1、. Background of Thomas HardyThomas Hardy (1840-1928)is one of the greatest English poet and novelist between the 18th Century and the 20thcentury(Victorian period).Hardy is famous for his depictions of the imaginary county “Wessex”. Hardy is a cross-century literary giant. Success has masked the Wes
2、sex novels left a profound impression. Hardys work reflected his stoical pessimism and sense of tragedy in human life.(women especially),and of deep changes of social economy, politics, ethic and custom after the invasion of capitalism into the English countryside and towns. They exposed the hypocri
3、sies of the capitalistic ethics, law and religion, which inherited the excellent tradition of realistic criticism as well as exploited a road for English literature in the 20th century. Hardy kept cracking tragedies of Greek and Shakespeare with all his life, and was influenced by the skepticism of
4、neoteric scientific ideology, so that his opinion towards life was pessimistic and fated, and he thought that on matter what kind of degree human society had developed, human being were unable to get rid of the tricks, coincidences were everywhere, natures tinge suffused around, environment served a
5、s a foil to the roles, and the roles characters were mixed up with the environment. These were ingenuities exerted by the writer, in addition, Hardy had worked as an architect in his early time, so his works were written with a style that could be relished again and again. The scenarios, characters
6、and sceneries of Hardys works were so fine, perfect, compact and harmonic that few writers could compete with him.Thomas Hardys Religious Beliefs2.1 ProfileLike so many other major Victorian authors, on his early stage, Thomas Hardy had an important Evangelical phase that left a deep impress on his
7、thought. Examining the text of a sermon clearly marked by “Evangelical style and theology” that the eighteen-year-old Hardy wrote, we can concludes that it provides convincing evidence of Hardys already being sympathetic to Evangelicalism by October 1858,his taking sufficiently seriously his so-call
8、ed “dream” of ordination to practice writing a sermon, and, most significantly, his having a personal faith that was both ardent and orthodox”. This new evidence proves important because it requires rewriting the history of the novelists religious belief or beliefs.Thomas Hardy used to be an archite
9、cts apprentice in Dorchester. At this stage, Hardy studied intensively on the Bible and further inquired into Anglican doctrine on pedobaptism.2.2 Detailed ResearchAlthough one his oldest friends, Henry Bastow, an ardent Baptist who emigrated to Australia, long ago claimed that in Hardy had been an
10、Evangelical, scholars have generally dismissed his remarks, largely on the basis of the autobiography.Www.LunWenN “the Hardy of Life and Work” presents his “youthful faith as gentlemanly and unimpassioned, more social that religious, and fundamentally different from the Evangelicalindeed evangelisti
11、czeal embodied in the sermon. This Hardy presumably never underwent a classic Victorian loss of faith because he never had a sustained, personal faith to lose”. The new evidence paints a very different picture.Citing Timothy Hands 1989 “notable book on Hardy and Christianity,” Dalziel lists the nove
12、lists lifelong connections to the orthodox Christianity he was soon to abandon:(1)His familys associations with the established church;(2)His lifelong love of church music and the language of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer;(3)His continued attending religious services;(4)His poetrys occasio
13、nal expression longing for belief (e.g. “The Oxen”);(5)His conviction that the Church wasand should remainthe social, ethical, and educational center of a community.Despite these lifelong connections with the Church of Englandconnections much firmer and more numerous than most Victorian authors who
14、lost their belief “Hardy repeatedly articulated both his conviction that the Cause of Things must be unconscious, neither moral nor immoral, but unmoral, and his hope that this Unconscious, Will was evolving into consciousness would ultimately become sympathetic”. Nonetheless, Dalziel argues that ho
15、wever far Hardy moved from his Evangelical sermon of 1858, its three main points remain the “central preoccupations” of his life: the emphasis” on the law as curse, on suffering, and on the saving force of love”. She therefore argues that Hardy the atheist remained” profoundly Christian” in many way
16、s.However, there are some question remains. If one retains some of the cultural, emotional, and even ethical attitudes of Christianity, as so many Victorian non-believers did, but does not have any faith in a personal god, much less in the divinity of Christ and salvation through him, can these attitudes still be considered Christian? Wouldnt it be less tendentious and a lot more convincing
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