1. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

2. Features of his novels 1.sympathy for the peasants in an age of decline and decay of peasantry; 2.nostalgia for the pastoral and patriarchal mode of life; 3.man’s life controlled by hostile, cruel, mysterious fate; 4.a pessimistic vein runs throughout his novels.

3. Features of his novels 5. architectural structure by accumulating each circumstance, each detail to strengthen the final effect—Fate; 6. a naturalistic tendency in his works.

4. Features of his novels 7.nature in his novels personified and symbolic, like a character in the development of the plot (eg.Edgon Heath); 8. a good knowledge of folkways(superstition.) and peasants’ feelings;

5. Tess of the D’Urbervilles 1.characters Tess Durbeyfield, Alec D’Urbervilles (doubtful right to it), Angel Clare 2.theme the tragic fate of a pure woman as quotations from the novel: As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods: They kill us for their sport. “Justice” was done, and the President of the immortals (Aeschylus’s words) had ended his sport with Tess.

6. Tess of the D’Urbervilles Chapter LVIII(the excerpt) 1.Tess’s self-denying attitude :she looks down upon herself; 2.her love for Angel; 3.her miseries; 4.symbolism(eg. her lying on an altar).

7. His poety –Quite a few of his poems are set against the bleak and forbidding Dorset landscape, whose physical harshness echoes that of an indifferent, if not malevolent, universe. –