Double Narrative Perspectives On "Other"

D. H. Lawrence is primary recognized as a great novelist, but his poetic talent is given comparatively less attention. He recognizes poetry as the passion of his lifetime and composes about 1000 pieces of poems,800 of which are collected in his published collections such as Birds, Beasts and Flowers, Pansies and Nettles. Lawrence emphasizes the unconsciousness which finds expression in his record of passionate life experiences and spontaneous feelings. The innovation he advocates in poetic form, content and thinking aims to represent the natural flow of life force. Lawrence has produced quite a lot of successful and impressive poetic pieces including his great dialectic poems, Birds, Beasts and Flowers and Last Poems.Due to his subversion of social and poetic conventions, the admission of Lawrence poetic genius went through a tough road both in China and in foreign countries. The study on Lawrence’s poetry in foreign countries is comparatively objective and all around. Scholars have recognized both the genius and imperfection of Lawrence poetry throughout his whole poetic career. Researches have been conducted on the autobiographical elements, poetic thinking, themes, poetic techniques of his poetry, and in comparison with other poets. In contrast, the study on Lawrence’s poetry in China is still in a marginal place. The translation of Lawrence poetry comes slow and insufficient. Quite comfortingly, there has appeared a growing interest in Lawrence’s poetry since 1995. The domestic study so far mainly focuses on the themes and poetic techniques, some researchers have studied it from perspectives of structuralism, feminism and ecocriticism. However, the previous study in China is comparatively narrow in scope. Most is still limited to the most notable poems such as "Snake" and "The Ship of Death", leaving a great number of other valuable poems untouched. What’s more, there is obvious unnecessary repetition in the study of images and ecocritical implications of his poetry. The most serious problem is misinterpretation or distortion of the Lawrence’s poetic thinking. Some ecocritical studies simply believe Lawrence is an upholder of the harmony between human and nature. In actuality, Lawrence is hardly a romantic poet characterized with beliefs such as perfection and harmony. What this thesis aims at is to shed light on the real Lawrence’s poetic thinking by focusing on the content and narrative strategy of narrating "Other" in Lawrence’s poems, further supported by the poet’s own essays, letters and writings by serious critics about Lawrence’s poetic creation.The thesis falls into five chapters. The first chapter gives an introduction to Lawrence’s poetic creation. Lawrence’s poetic career consists of three phases, whose themes are respectively love, nature, and religion and death. However, narrative of "Other" is the thread that strings together the three phases. This chapter also gives a survey of existing studies on Lawrence’s poetry, defines "Lawrentian Other", and explains the focus and structure of the thesis.The second chapter makes a detailed categorization of the varieties of "Other" in Lawrence’s poetry. Two kinds of "Other" can be found in Lawrence’s poems:human "Other" and non-human "Other". The human "Other" include women, ancients and non-white races. The non-human "Other" include beasts, plants and the living cosmos. What’s more, this chapter devotes special attention to the "Otherness" within the human "Self", for the pivot of the exploration of all the "Other" relations is a better knowledge of the unknown "Self", the intuitive, emotional and suppressed "Self".The third chapter studies the narrative strategy of "Other" in Lawrence’s poetry. Lawrence adopts double narrative perspectives in narrating "Other" in his poems:the rationality-based logocentric perspective and intuition-based mystic perspective. The two perspectives often coexist to produce conflict, but they also interact with each other in the form of dialogue. The whole process of their interaction is symbolic of man’s struggle to integrate the divided human psyche to its wholeness.The fourth chapter digs into the deeper significance beneath the narrative of "Other". The alternation of the double perspectives and the process of dialogue both adhere to Lawrence’s poetic thinking on "Other". They demonstrate a desire for the knowledge of "Other" and respect for their "Otherness". Furthermore, they reveal a better knowledge of "Self", especially the limitation of human consciousness and the predicament of mechanized society. Finally, Lawrence’s poetic thinking extends to the knowledge of the living cosmos, which indicates Lawrence’s worship for the spontaneous flow of life and effort to revive the vitality of cosmos against the mechanized age.In the last chapter, the thesis reaches a conclusion. Against the social and historical background of scientific-technological revolution, Lawrence’s narrative of "Other" is in fact a diagnosis of the malady of the mechanized man and society. While struggling in the dilemma of divided "Self", the poet seems more inclined to find way back to the blood knowledge which embraces intuition and emotion and leads to the destination of psychic wholeness. With an epistemological quest into the mystery of "Other", Lawrence calls for an overall restoration-to restore the divided man to an integrated man, and the mechanized society to a society with natural vitality.