Cinematic ways of seeing in the novels of D.H. Lawrence.

This thesis aims to identify and analyse the cinematic ways of seeing in Lawrence's novels by comparing the novels to the films adapted from them. Methodologically, the cinematic ways of seeing are initially identified in the novels by a series of pointers which are derived from Lawrence's comments on the cinema in his letters, novels, short stories and essays. These ways of seeing, once identified, are compared to the ways of seeing in the film adaptations. The films are considered as works of art in their own right, but the focus falls on them as metanarratives, the analysis of which draws out characteristics of the novels' ways of seeing. The thesis's introduction presents Lawrence's own comments on the cinema, and thus facilitates connections between the novels' ways of seeing and Lawrence's life. The connections suggest that the ways of seeing are expressions of Lawrence's experiences as a son, a lover, a husband, an outcast and a traveller. In each role, especially that of the outcast during and after the war, there is a gulf between him and society which is reflected in his characters' and narrators' ways of seeing. This alienation has its counterpart in the form of the novels and generates some of the prototypical tropes of modernism and postmodernism. Lawrence understood that seeing is a form of relationship; that how we see is as important as what we see; and that it is in our seeing that the drama between health and sickness in each individual is played out. This thesis will study aspects of that drama through its analysis of ways of seeing in three of Lawrence's novels and their film adaptations