D. H. Lawrence and Narrative Viewpoint

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.Table of Content1. Narrative viewpoint: the theoretical debate; 2. D. H. Lawrence and the novel; 3. Naming characters; 4. Connecting characters' viewpoints; 5. Binding viewpoints through repetition; 6. Situating dialogicity in the novel; 7. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.Review QuoteIn 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.Review Quote[Sotirova] is a linguist, and her book is primarily a work of linguistics, but it is also informed by a literary intelligence which, as she demonstrates, is not always present in linguistic studies of literature … This book puts linguistics to the service both of literary theory, in providing empirical support for Bakhtin’s dialogism, and of criticism, providing objective evidence of what a conscious and subtle master of narrative viewpoint Lawrence was … I warmly recommend it.Review QuoteThis monograph is a salutary and very impressive example of the insight that can be generated by bringing literary studies and literary stylistics into an intelligent and well-informed dialogue and as such should be widely read and considered both for its own strengths as well as an exemplum of what can be achieved through real inter-disciplinary dialogue … To illuminate a writer like Lawrence, when library shelves already groan with the weight of commentary his work has attracted in the last 100 years, is a real achievement. This is a genuinely new and insightful work on a central canonical writer.Review QuoteSotirova’s eminently readable study, which keeps linguistic jargon to a minimum and offers good explanations of its key terms, is highly recommended for Lawrence scholars and narrative theorists alike. Students interested in Bakthinian concepts such as dialogicity, social heteroglossia and linguistic hybridity will benefit from Sotirova’s clear definitions, while the historical survey in chapter two is an excellent introduction to the debate.Biographical NoteVioleta Sotirova is a Lecturer in Stylistics at the University of Nottingham, UK.Stylistic study of D. H. Lawrence's presentation of narrative viewpoint, resolving current controversies in narratology and Lawrence criticism.Advances in Stylistics provides student resources and research material in cutting-edge stylistics. It forgoes traditional boundaries to encompass the study of both literary and non-literary texts, and covers exciting new developments in the field. It takes a broad view of stylistics as the practice of using linguistic methodologies and analytical frameworks to facilitate the analysis of texts of all genres and types, for the purpose of explaining why we interpret texts in the way that we do. Books in the series address such topics as stylistic theory, discourse analysis, language and cognition, literary genre, corpus stylistics, the analysis of historical texts, pedagogical stylistics, multimodality and stylistic methodologies. The series further develops stylistic and linguistic theory, to demonstrate the application and value of stylistic tools of analysis and further consolidate stylistics as a major study and research area within language studies. Editorial Board Jean Boase-Beier, University of East Anglia, UK Beatrix Busse, University of Heidelberg, Germany Szilvia Csábi, Independent Scholar Yaxiao Cui, University of Nottingham, UK Monika Fludernik, University of Freiburg, Germany Lesley Jeffries, University of Huddersfield, UK Manuel Jobert, Jean Moulin University, Lyon 3, France Lorenzo Mastropierro, University of Nottingham, UK Eric Rundquist, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile Larry Stewart, College of Wooster, USA Odette Vassallo, University of Malta, Malta Peter Verdonk, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Chantelle Warner, University of Arizona, USAOutlining the linguistic mechanics of viewpoint shifts and the effects produced by specific indices can provide a model for subsequent analyses of other authors.No comprehensive account of the style of Lawrence exists to date