Nature in the Work of Thomas Hardy

Abstract

The work focuses on the portrayal of nature in three novels by Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The Return of the Native. The first part of this paper focuses on the historical and literary background of the 19th century Britain as well as on the features of two movements important for this thesis naturalism, and romanticism. The aim of the paper is to analyze these novels, in the second part of this paper, and decide whether or not the author was influenced by naturalistic ideas of the 19th century, but also by the still remaining influence of the Romantic period.