作家托马斯·哈代生活于十九世纪中后期的英国，见证了英国从传统农耕社会进入工业时代的历史进程。工业浪潮的迅猛推进，给古老乡村带来了剧烈冲击。哈代以他的故乡多塞特郡为原型虚构了“威塞克斯世界”，抒写他对时代变迁的关注和对底层劳动人民的同情。今天为大家推荐的是其代表作之一《卡斯特桥市长》，在主人公跌宕起伏的命运悲剧中洞见维多利亚时代的社会风貌与复杂人性。

作品简介

《卡斯特桥市长》是英国小说家、诗人托马斯·哈代创作的长篇小说，发表于1886年。小说围绕主人公打草工亨查德的人生轨迹展开：他曾因醉酒而将妻女出卖，事后追悔莫及、发愤图强，二十年后当上了卡斯特桥市的市长，妻女也回到他的身边，但灾难也接踵而至……作者通过讲述这一悲剧性的故事，解释了资本主义发展给劳动人民带来的灾难，对不合理的社会制度与时代弊病作出深刻反思与批判。

 

作者简介

托马斯·哈代（Thomas Hardy，1840-1928），英国诗人、小说家。他出生于多塞特郡，1856年结束学习生涯后从事建筑师工作，1867年开始考虑以写作为生，1868年完成第一部小说《穷汉与淑女》。哈代一生共发表近20部长篇小说，继承和发扬了维多利亚时代的文学传统，代表作有《德伯家的苔丝》《无名的裘德》《还乡》《列王》等。

 

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When he was calmer, he turned to his original conviction that he must somehow find her and his little Elizabeth-Jane, and put up with the shame as best he could. It was of his own making, and he ought to bear it. But first he resolved to register an oath, a greater oath than he had ever sworn before: and to do it properly he required a fit place and imagery; for there was something fetichistic in this man’s beliefs.

 He shouldered his basket and moved on, casting his eyes inquisitively round upon the landscape as he walked, and at the distance of three or four miles perceived the roofs of a village and the tower of a church. He instantly made towards the latter object. The village was quite still, it being that motionless hour of rustic daily life which fills the interval between the departure of the field-labourers to their work, and the rising of their wives and daughters to prepare the breakfast for their return. Hence he reached the church without observation, and the door being only latched, he entered. The hay-trusser deposited his basket by the font, went up the nave till he reached the altar-rails, and opening the gate, entered the sacrarium, where he seemed to feel a sense of the strangeness for a moment; then he knelt upon the foot-pace. Dropping his head upon the clamped book which lay on the Communion-table, he said aloud --

“I, Michael Henchard, on this morning of the sixteenth of September, do take an oath before God here in this solemn place that I will avoid all strong liquors for the space of twenty-one years to come, being a year for every year that I have lived. And this I swear upon the book before me; and may I be strook dumb, blind, and helpless, if I break this my oath!”

迈克尔·米尔盖特作为国际知名哈代研究权威学者，其撰写的《托马斯·哈代传》是学界公认的经典研究著作。该传记初版于1982年问世，此后数十年间，大量关于哈代生平、创作的全新史料与研究成果陆续涌现。本次推出的修订扩充新版，充分吸纳最新研究成果，对原作内容进行全面重审、精细增补与系统修订。全书翔实梳理哈代生平轨迹、创作历程、思想流变等，对其人生际遇、文学创作、精神世界等各维度内容作出全新、精准的学术阐释。全书内容严谨、叙事流畅，是当代读者系统、深入了解托马斯·哈代其人其作的权威典范读本。

This major new reading of the novels of Thomas Hardy by leading critic George Levine disentangles the author’s often elaborately distanced prose form his beautiful poetic and precise renderings of the natural world. Clear, direct and minimally academic in his own writing, Levine provides an overview of Hardy’s entire fictional canon, with extensive discussions of his early and late novels, drawing new attention to the way Hardy absorbed both the ideas and the writing strategies of Charles Darwin, and develops new perspectives first articulated in the literary responses of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence.

文案策划及录音：图书借阅部 李圣昭

编辑：宣传策划小组 郭琳