The Inheritance and Development of the Traditional Culture in Jude the Obscure.doc

the inheritance and development of the traditional culture in jude the obscureabstract: hardy subtly fused these three cultural sources of european traditional tragedies from ancient greek tragedy, bible and shakespeare in writing jude the obscure, from which his own style of tragedy thus came into being. as a traditionalist the theme that hardy probed in jude the obscure is traditional, although there are obvious traits of modernism in thematic matters. in fact, hardy not only inherited the soul of the european culture in his work, but also developed the theme in plotting his tragedy. key words: traditional sources inheritance and development tragedyi. introductionthe european culture itself is a part of the world culture while jude the obscure with its perfect plot derives from the european culture as well. it is not sporadic or occasional that hardys tragic works appeared in the history of the western literature for the tragic consciousness plays an important part in that culture. so to speak, the tragic novel of hardy unknowingly inherited and developed such ideas of tendency in its style and connotation. hardys tragedies took the shape out of such three sources as the ancient greek tragedy, the bible literature and shakespeares plays. hardy subtly fused these three traditional sources of european tragedies in his writing of jude the obscure, from which his own style of tragedy thus came into being. therefore, we can safely conclude that in style thomas hardy is a traditionalist and that the real theme of the novel jude the obscure is traditional, although there are obvious traits of modernism in thematic matters.ii. the influence of ancient greek tragedyearly in the remote past, the ancient greeks were curious about many things, including what made the universe. they had the spirit of free enquiry and were quite ready to drop established ideas, to speculate, to use their imagination and to form their own conclusions. the greeks started to perform plays at religious festivals. out of these origins a powerful drama developed. when we speak of a drama, we mean a story in dialogue performed by actors on a stage before an audience in other words, a play. we also use the term “drama” in a more general sense to refer to the literary genre that encompasses all written plays and to the profession of writing, producing, and performing plays. it manages to stir and move the audience deeply by showing heroes and heroines in complicated human situations, out of which there is no escape but death. many ancient greek dramas concerned with conflicts. aristotle defined tragedy 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 the 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. by “language embellished”, i mean language into which rhythm, “harmony”, and song enter. by “the several kinds in separate parts”, i mean, that some parts are rendered through the medium of verse alone, others again with the aid of song. tragedy is concerned with the harshness and apparent injustice of life. it usually recounts an important and causally related series of events in the life of a person of significance. the events would culminate in trials and catastrophes of a hero, who falls down from power and whose eventual death leads to the downfall of others. often the heros fall from happiness is due to a weakness in his character. the tragic action arouses feelings of awe in the audience, who often leave the theatre with a renewed sense of the seriousness and significance of human life. the word catharsis is often used to describe the audiences feelings. it means purging the mind of the feelings of pity and fear which has been aroused by the play. the characters of ancient greek tragedies are more heroic than ordinary. the tragedies are usually named after the main characters in the plotting, such as the sovereigns or gentlemen and so on. in contrast, some of the plots were taken over and adapted by hardys works. in jude the obscure, the figure of ordinary people takes the place of those sovereigns and heroes, that is, hardy turned jude, the stoneman, into the protagonist or the dramatis personae. this kind of unique and untouchable style of writing indicates hardys intentional focus on the people and the democracy. in jude the obscure the conceptions of divinity domination and fate have been materially changed and differentiated from those thoughts in the ancient greek tragedies. although hardy exploited such glossaries as “god” or “fate” in his writing, they had lost the literal and original connotations and determinacy essentially. hardys god does not outmatch and surpass the nature, but it lies in the universe and the nature. this change of meaning demonstrates that hardys perspective probing into the human mystery has shifted from the outside of human being to the inside of the human society. the age-old form of tragedy adds a kind of primitive simplicity to the novel plotting. all kinds of rules in the nature and society are comprised in the ancient concepts of “god” or “fate”. the marriage history between the parents of jude and sue, the suicide of father time, etc. are inevitably associated with the mysterious comeuppance or the deserved consequences, which created the complicated and confusing atmosphere for the plotting of the novel. although hardy occasionally overstressed the sporadic events and explained the cause-result relationships with the conceptions of fate, he truly displayed in his novel the complicated, keen-edged, social contradiction and conflicts in britain during the post-victorian time. therefore, the tragedy sense hardy wants to show in jude the obscure is the harshness of the changing things. what hardy contributed to the greek tragic sense is illustrated by the thought that the dominating god in the ancient greek results from the force of nature. hardy wrote in 1912, he made the parallel between greek literature and his own work. he wrote “i considered that our magnificent heritage from the greeks in dramatic literature found sufficient room for a large proportion of its action in an extent of their country not much larger than the half-dozen counties here reunited under the old name of wessex”. so hardy was creating his own microcosm, a dream world which, among the educated middle classes for whom he was writing, might just as well have been on the moon.iii. the influence of bible among all the religions by which people seek to worship, christianity is by far the most influential in the west. every phase of mans life is touched by this religion, so much so that it has become part and parcel of the western culture. it was recorded in the old testament later, which still became the first part of the christian bible. the bible is a collection of religious writings comprising two parts: the old testament and the new testament. the former is about god and the laws of god. the word “testament” means “agreement” namely, the agreement between god and man.hardy was once a religionist and he even read up the bible in his childhood. in jude the obscure, we can easily see that not only the novelist cited literal version of the bible, but also took and borrowed the form of job in the old testament so as to reveal the conflicts between judes grief and faith. book of job is a poetic drama with the following theme: job speaks-job and his friends state their case -job speaks again-god answers job-job answers god.job, a legendary figure in the distant past, is a law abiding and god-fearing innocent man. job was without sin and upright, fearing god and keeping himself far from evil. yet for all his goodness, misfortunes befall him one after another. one day the lord said to satan, “see, i give all he has into your hands, only do not put a finger on the man himself.” then jobs oxen, asses, camels were taken away; his sons and daughters were dead. job heard of this news and got up, and after parting his clothing and cutting off his hair, he went down on his face to the earth, and gave worship, and said, “with nothing i came out of my mothers body, and with nothing i will go back there; the lord gave and the lord has taken away; let the lords name be praised.” in this entire job did no sin, and did not say that gods acts were foolish. and there was a day when the sons of the gods came together before the lord, and the lord said to satan, “have you taken note of my servant job, for there is no one like him on the earth, a man without sin and upright, fearing god and keeping himself far from evil? and he still keeps his righteousness, though you have been moving me to send destruction on him without cause. but now, if you only put your hand on his bone and his flesh, he will certainly be cursing you to your face.” and the lord said to satan, see, he is in your hands; only do not take his life. and satan went out from before the lord, and sent on job an evil disease covering his skin from his feet to the top of his head. and he took a broken bit of a pot, seated in the dust, and rubbing himself with the sharp edge of it. his wife said to him, “are you still keeping your righteousness? say a curse against god, and put an end to yourself.” he said to her, “you are talking like one of the foolish women. if we take the good god sends us, are we not to take the evil when it comes? in this entire job kept his lips from sin.” this book describes how he endures all his sufferings and still keeps his faith in god. finally god grants him a happy and long life. the philosophical question discussed here is “why god allows the innocent to suffer and what one can know about god at all”.the view of the world of the bible has deeply influenced many religious writers, including thomas hardy. in jude the obscure, jude believes in god when he is young. here the common ground is both jude and job reverently believe in god but why did they receive the brutal shock without doing anything wrong? this similarity lies both in jude the obscure and job. but no answer was given by either of them. in contrast to the sequel that job unconditionally accepts the god in job, the old testament, hardy depicted the short life of jude so as to reveal the generative and transformative process from which jude held his ground on the religion and to which jude abandoned the religious faith. being defeated in the conflict between the grief and faith, his destruction visions the courage that human pursues rigidly. in other words, jude was following the job-like thought and research. judes spirit to explore and to suspect god and his betrayal to the age-old faith are no other than the innovation and development on the basis of referring to the book of job. so in the style of jude the obscure, hardy inherited the features of the old testament.iv. the influence of william shakespeareshakespeare was a man of the late renaissance who gave the fullest expression to humanist ideals. shakespeare has accepted the renaissance views on literature. shakespeare, as a humanist of the time, did not hesitate to describe the cruelty and anti-natural character of the civil wars, but he did not go all the way against the feudal rule. he holds that literature should be a combination of beauty, kindness and truth, and should reflect nature and reality. shakespeares major characters are not simply ones representing certain group or class of people, but are individuals with strong and distinct personalities. to achieve this, he makes frequent use of comparisons and contrasts by portraying the characters in pairs or setting them against one another. in his dramatic creation, especially in his histories and tragedies, he affirms the importance of the feudal system in order to uphold the nations unity and social order. his greatest period was between 1600 and 1607, during which he produced hamlet and the other comedies and tragedies. shakespeare also states that literary works, which have truly reflected nature and reality, can reach immortality. he individualizes his characters by emphasizing each ones dominant and unique qualities. in comedies, the playwright sang of youth, love and ideals of happiness. the heroes and heroines fight against destiny and mold their own fate according to their own free will. the general spirit of these comedies is optimism. in shakespeares tragedies, he claims through the mouth of hamlet that the “end” of dramatic creation is to give faithful reflection of the social realities of the time. shakespeares tragedies are of astonishing variety in presentment, dramatic movement, and in characterization. the characters differ in their sex, age, state of life, virtues and vices, but all of them show distinctive marks even if their parts are very short. his comedies bring us into happy and ideal worlds with singing, dancing, harmony with nature and freedom from the vices of the world. they prove shakespeare to be a great humanist writer. he seldom invents his own plots; instead, he borrows them from some old plays or storybooks, or from ancient greek and roman sources. the combination of tragic and comic elements and the subtle use of the dramatic irony make the plots and structures of his plays more concrete and abundant. the device of a play has also played an important part in the structure of some of his plays. his style has helped shape the language of all english-speaking countries, and his influence in literature is immeasurable.we can take an excerpt from hamlet to illustrate this point. shakespeare focused the play on the conflict within the thoughtful and idealistic hamlet as he is torn between the demands of his emotions and the hesitant skepticism of his mind. hamlet reveals this conflict in several famous and eloquent soliloquies. the “to be or not to be” soliloquy is the best known and often felt to be central to hamlets personality. it provides an excellent example of hamlet not doing anything. he considers that it would be far better for us all to commit suicide, but that we dont because we are scared of what might happen to us in the afterlife. furthermore, we very often put things off because of our understanding that we might be being sinful. we look too closely at plans and find reasons for not carrying them out. the speech conveys a sense of utter world-weariness as well as the authors incisive comments on the social reality of his time. hamlet influenced deeply on thomas hardys works, especially on the writing of jude the obscure. the inheritance of shakespeares humanist thoughts in jude the obscure is mostly embodied in hardys succession of shakespeares speculation on the nature of human. the “to be or not to be” is hamlets best-known soliloquy representing the aspiration of shakespeare, who discovered the existence of human being and glorify its significance. however, in that age of humanism that shakespeare believed in, an individual does not possess the noumenon significance that he can be opposed to god. in jude the obscure, jude commenced to skepticize the entity of god and then he abandoned his faith in god. that is to say, in hardys writing, man has become an entity who dare contend with god even though it is doomed to be a tragedy. as for the inheritance of the dramatic form of shakespeare, hardy absorbed the strongpoint of this master and made some alteration by himself. first, he neatly learned the plotting method to arrange his novels sequel as shakespeare did. shakespeares tragedy usually ends with the death of the main characters, while jude the obscure also began with a wedding, which was often used in shakespeares comedies, but the main character came to an end of death. for jude lost his spirit brace after his struggling between the marriage of sexual passions and the heart-linked love. judes short life was ended by diseases on the lonely bed and at the chapel of christianity where he ever longed for his dream and ideal. such dramatic forms that hardy borrowed from shakespeare expressed hardys realistic understanding of life and made jude the obscure plotted with fierce conflicts of tragedy. second, hardy also learned the method that shakespeare used to recount the lower class people. he portrayed the craftsman out at the elbows in the slum suburb outside the church, the urban folks and the rustic peasants etc., which provided the relevant background to the main characters in the novel. v. conclusion in this paper, we have discussed what hardy did in the inheritance and development of the western traditional tragedies and culture. in fact, the reason that the tragic or thespian sense lies in jude the obscure is hardy fused the traditional tragic forms with his novel plot and promoted it in his writi