D. H. Lawrence and Narrative Viewpoint

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This book is a stylistic study of D. H. Lawrence's presentation of narrative viewpoint. The focus is mainly on Lawrence's third novel, Sons and Lovers, occupying a crucial position in his oeuvre and judged by critics to be his first mature piece. While sharing many features typical of nineteenth-century novels, it marks the emergence of a new technique of writing consciousness that functioned as a precursor to the modernist practice of dialogic shifts across viewpoints. Through a detailed linguistic analysis, Sotirova shows that different characters' viewpoints are not simply juxtaposed in the narrative, but linked in a way that creates dialogic resonances between them. The dialogic linking is achieved through the use of devices that have parallel functions in conversational discourse - referring expressions, sentence-initial correctives and repetition. The book uses stylistics to resolve current controversies in narratology and Lawrence criticism. In approaching the study of narrative viewpoint from the angle of discourse, Sotirova arrives at cutting-edge insights into Lawrence's work. This book will be required reading for stylisticians, narratologists, literary linguists and literary studies scholars.

Reviews

In this valuable study of Lawrence's use of free indirect style in Sons and Lovers (1913), Sotirova (Univ. of Nottingham, UK) brings the insights of linguistics to literary criticism, aiming to augment the critical commonplace that Lawrence is a dialogic writer... Sotirova offers a compelling theory of free indirect style and sensitive readings of Sons and Lovers...Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. -- CHOICE

Author Bio

Violeta Sotirova is a Lecturer in Stylistics at the University of Nottingham, UK.