Literary Trends and Ecological Vision: Focus on Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure

Abstract

This work investigates the role literary trends play in Thomas Hardy’s representation of man’s relationship with nature in The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891)and Jude the Obscure (1895).  In order to examine the impact of literary trends on Hardy’s ecological vision, it is hypothesized that the literary conventions the author was exposed to constituted the springboard for his depiction of man’s links with the environment in the selected texts. This is because such movements informed the issues and style of Hardy’s environmental narrative. Ecocriticism and Influence constituted the theoretical framework on which this study was anchored to reveal that Classicism, Romanticism and Victorianism shaped not just the content but also the style of Hardy’s environmental discourse in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Therefore, authors’ backgrounds are significant in their environmental perspectives and should be taken into account during ecocritical debates and analyses; as the literary conventions Hardy was exposed to informed the content and form of his ecological narrative.

Keywords: Environment, Fiction, Ecocriticism, Thomas Hardy, Degradation, Protection