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D.H. LAWRENCE'S “SONS AND LOVERS” AS AN INNOVATIVE NOVEL

V. Kravchenko, O. Baryshnikova, L. Pudeyan

Abstract

Division into periods of D.H. Lawrence’s creative activity mainly is based on his biographical facts, but we should find a point of his departure from the apprenticeship, from the traditions of the English novel of the 19th century. In many respects the author of Sons and Lovers departs from traditions, although he does not break with them completely. Lawrence creates a synthetic genre, combining the structure of a Bildungsroman and a Künstlerroman, giving his protagonist some autobiographical traits. Buthe does not seek to immerse us in the nature of the creative process and to show the traditional conflict between the artist and the environment. The main subject of the author’s attention is Paul Morel’s subconsciousness that plays a huge role in the formation of a personality, in human life from Lawrence’s point of view. Innovative characterization is manifested in shifting of the emphasis on the comprehension of a personality who is more individual-psychological than social one; in the dynamically unfinished structure of a literary character in the spirit of the 20th century poetics. The character dynamics is connected with a constant inner struggle of individual and general, psychological and social, biological and intellectually-conscious. It reverberates binary oppositions of the writer's mythogenic consciousness. The author combines the principle of "omniscient narrative" with the principle of a direct characterization either through dialogues and notes or with the help of a stream of free indirect discourse which forms approaching the hero to a reader. This kind of narrative style does not form all at once – in the first chapters of the novel the narration is more epic. Starting with the chapter «Paul launches into life» the outside world is being presented in the light of a certain consciousness; the contours of objects are being blurred, realities is losing their concreteness and generally act as symbols of the hero’s internal states. Such narrative multiplicity is especially important for the type of a novel with a deep penetration into characters instead of action. Sons and Loversis considered as a landmark inhis creative evolution from the Victorian novel to a new modernist poetics, to a myth-oriented novel.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2017/62/S27.055

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