Biblical Archetypes In D.H. Lawrence's Three Novels

David Herbert (D.H.) Lawrence is one of the most important, influential and versatile English writers, using almost every literary form in which the English language can express itself. He is a talented English writer, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic of the 20th century. He is best known for his novels, and good at short and travel stories. Many of his works are based on the Bible.This thesis attempts to probe into D.H. Lawrence's biblical thoughts and biblical archetypes in his three representative works Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love from the angle of archetypal criticism in order to acquire a better understanding of Lawrence's religious thoughts, attitude towards the females, hatred for industrialization, desire for freedom and bright future.Introduction makes a general understanding of the archetypal criticism and gives a short summary of researches and achievements on the writer and his works.Chapter I discusses the biblical archetypal female characters in his three works, based on Frye's archetypal criticism, from the three aspects, apocalyptic type, intermediate type and demonic type. The description of different kinds of females reflects the writer's attitude towards females, Christianity and dehumanized industrialization.Chapter II studies the biblical archetypal images in the three works, focusing on water, tree and fire images and emphasizing two double functions of these images: apocalyptic creative source and demonic destructive power. Lawrence skillfully combines the images in the novels with the images in the Bible which give them richer, broader and deeper connotations. These biblical images express the writer's opinions on the death and rebirth: death is the way to get rid of the old life and lead to the bright future.Chapter III employs Frye's "U-shaped" theme mode to elaborate on the biblical archetypal themes in the three works, including degeneration, lost paradise, death and rebirth. The purpose of these themes is to express the writer's love of nature, longing for a better life, the desire for rebirth and the hatred for the dehumanized industrialization.Lawrence draws on a lot of biblical archetypes in his novels. However, it is not the pure process of copying, and the writer displaces many archetypes in his writing to achieve the perfect combination of arts and reality, novels and the Bible. His serious exploration on the suppression of Christianity on females, dehumanized effect of industrialization on humans, the problem of death and rebirth fully reflects the great influence of the Bible on his literary creation.