Existentialist Reading of The Mayor of Casterbridge开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义

existentialism is a school of philosophy that emerged after the first world war, it ishuman-centered and respects human personality and freedom. existentialists believe that human beings live a meaningless and purposeless life in this absurd and alienated world, even the man’s existence itself has no meaning. but men can build and achieve themselves by the pursuit of the real existence on the basis of his original existence. hardy showed us a picture of different people struggling with the absurd world and pursuing the meaning of life in his novel the mayor of casterbridge.

since tomas hardy is an author whose works always reflects an existentialism tendency, studying the existentialism in his work can help us have a better understanding of this book and also the existentialist theory itself.

also, contemporary society is such a catabolic society full with cheating, betrayal and suffering that many people tend to feel confused and desperate about their life. they are all facing a similar dilemma like the roles in the book the mayor of casterbridge, so we can interpret the characters by existentialist philosophy so that we can get some enlightenment about how to be free and valuable people in the society.

2. 研究内容和预期目标

research problem：how to interpret the existentialism behind the plot, and what can we learn from the struggling and pursuing process of different roles

the key issue to be solved：with the interpretation of the existentialism behind the plot, i want to find a way to fulfill our real existence in the cruel society.

3. 国内外研究现状

The research of this book can be divided into two kinds among the foreign scholars. Firstly, they tend to focus on the writing technique of tragedy. For example, some of the reports compare the tragedy structure of The Mayor of Casterbridge with that of the Bible to research the writing techniques. And other elements in the book such as the environment description and music are also been studied. Another kind of researches tend to study several works of Hardy to study the shared ideas Hardy wanted to convey in his works or formation and transformation of his writing style, for example, research on the image of Oedipus in The Return of The Native and The Mayor of Casterbridge and research on awakening of female consciousness of Hardy’s works.

The domestic researches tend to focus on using different theories to study the book. For example, feminist theory, evolution theory and ethical theory. Also the themes that are involved in foreign researches can be found in domestic research.

4. 计划与进度安排

1．november 22, 2020 the selection of topics；

2．november 30, 2020 opening report；

3．march 10, 2022 the first draft;

5. 参考文献