Publication Date

1973

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Garab, Arra M.

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of English

LCSH

Lawrence; D. H. (David Herbert); 1885-1930

Abstract

This study is concerned with the prosodic use of linguistic patterns to create poetic form. In it I describe D.H. Lawrence's major poetic techniques, indicating what the distinctive features of his style are and analyzing how his poetry is formed. Lawrence's prosody, the craft he used to create formal patterns in his poems, is based on syntax. By using syntactic structures artistically Lawrence gives rhythm to his poetry, the rhetorical placement of sentence elements contributing to the meaning and to the emotional effect of the poems as well. Lawrence's great technical achievement as a poet was to blend the rhythms of speech with the rhythms of emotion and experience, transferring them to a particular kind of poetic syntax which this study defines. In Chapters One and Two, I discuss what Lawrence's poetry is like, showing how all aspects of it are governed by rhythm; then I give a sampling of how Lawrence's poetry has been received. I comment particularly on how critics with a formalist viewpoint fail to realize that Lawrence's poetry has structure, but structure displayed as a result of syntactical patterning rather than patterning of meter or rhyme scheme. In Chapter Two, I discuss my methodology for analyzing Lawrence's poetry, showing how the system used to analyze style is based on a generative-structuralist approach to grammatical and syntactical analysis. An important factor in Lawrence's technique is his use of cumulative sentences, and I indicate how such sentences, when used effectively, can help a poet expand his technical capabilities. In the last two chapters, I discuss selected samples of Lawrence's poetry taken from two periods in his career: his early years, when he tended to overuse certain syntactic structures, in some poems, and then the years after 1920, after his distinctive poetic style had matured. The findings from my analysis of Lawrence's poems, an accounting of clausal and modifying segments for each poem analyzed, are discussed and tabulated in the Conclusion to this paper.

Comments

Includes bibliographical references.

Extent

155 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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