The Literature Network - Linguistic incantation and parody in Women in Love. (novel by D.H. Lawrence)

Linguistic incantation and parody in Women in Love. (novel by D.H. Lawrence)

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From: Style
Date: 19960322
Author:Stewart, Jack

In Women in Love, monosyllabic key words (go, do, use, will) and pleonastic phrasing call into question knowing or saying. A gap opens between language and being; speech acts function in social contexts in which words have shifting meanings. Lawrence foregrounds "linguistic incantation" (Merleau-Ponty) in "Rabbit" and parody that reinforces the target while annihilating the attacker in "Gudrun in the Pompadour." The author relies on an initiated reader to decode parody of Birkin's letter and salvage the convictions. This "double-voiced discourse" (Bakhtin) is at once catharsis and celebration ...

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