Tess and L'Abbe Mouret : a preliminary study of Hardy and Zola
Date
1989
Authors
Mason, Donald George
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Abstract
The question of Zola's influence on the later novels of Tomas Hardy stands, as William Newton points out in his important essay, "Hardy and the Naturalists," "in a state of considerable confusion, owing in the main to the great number of fragmentary and unsupported assertions already on record." The following thesis attempts to deal with many of the misconceptions; errors and prejudices that have, to a large degree, coloured the critical history of this question.
The first chapter, "Hardy, Zola, and England: To 1885," deals first with Zola's early literary reception in Victorian England, and then attempts to describe something of Hardy's own development to 1885, when, as the evidence suggests, he first came to read the novels of his famous French contemporary.
The second chapter, ."The Doll of English Fiction," continues through to about 1891, and discusses at some length the problems posed by literary censorship in the England of the 1880s and 90s, with specific reference to the trials of Henry Vizetelly; Zola's English translator. The primary concern in these first two chapters is on determining, so far as is possible, the nature of Hardy's understanding of and reaction to both the theoretical and the fictional writings of Emile Zola. Much of the commentary is therefore based on the critical writings of Hardy and his contemporaries, rather than on the later perceptions of modern criticism. The emphasis is on determining a factual basis for a study of influence, and in consistenyly centred around around such basic questions as "what Hardy read and when her ead it." Much reference is made throughout to Hardy's letters and notebooks, as well as to his two critical essays, "Candour in English Ficton" (1890) and "The Science of Fiction" (1891).
The third chapter, "Tess and l'Abbé Mouret," provides a detailed analysis based on specific comparisons of scenes and chracters within two novels, before moving on to a more open consideration of the two authors' common use of symbolic imagery in Tess of the d'Ubervilles and La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret.
Finally, as is suggested by the title of this thesis, some further questions are raised which still need to be addressed, allowing for the future development of this thesis into a more extensive study of the relationship between the novels of these two important authors.
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UN SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions