Existential Visions and Fictional Versions: A Comparative Critique of Thomas Hardy and Paulo Coelho’s Selected Novels

Abstract

The article is an attempt to explore the representation of existential conditions by juxtaposing the selected novels produced by Thomas Hardy, the Victorian literary giant, and Paulo Coelho, a part of the contemporary global canon, with the objective to sharpen readers’ understanding of various valences of the existentialist literary thought. Both fiction writers have depicted different dimensions of human existence extensively in their works. As the novelists have got prolific fictional yield on credit, the study has been delimited to the most representative of their works in terms of delineation of the existential ideas. As regards selection of the texts, Hardy’s The Return of the Native (1999/1878) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1998/1870) have been chosen, whereas The Alchemist (2005/1988) and The Zahir (1993/2005) have been culled from Coelho’s oeuvre. Accordingly, these four novels have been used as the primary data for the study. Methodologically, the study is qualitative, textual, and comparative in nature. The conceptual approach is rooted in existentialist thought, therefore Mary Warnock’s Existentialism (1971) has been taken as the theoretical benchmark to regulate the analysis and the argument. The selected texts have been sifted through to outline the salient features of the existential visions of the novelists. The major findings of the study include the identification of the novelists’ diametrically opposed visions and the contrasting versions as represented in the respective texts. Thus, the article facilitates understanding of the selected novels by placing Coelho as a foil for Hardy.