D.H. Lawrence's responses to visual arts and theories of art and their effect on his earlier fiction

It is the purpose of this thesis to investigate Lawrence the novelist’s reaction to visual arts and theories of art. Lawrence, as a practising painter at different stages of his career, wrote quasi-theoretical essays on art and the history of art. Nevertheless the primary concern of this thesis is with the nature of Lawrence's visual writing in the first five novels, rather than with the criticism of his "sui generis" art history or his characteristically intuitive approach to art.This thesis intends to show that Lawrence's particular mode of writing has an expressionistic bent, clearly visible in Sons and Lovers, which reaches its full maturity in The Rainbow. In Women in Love, although this style retains its capacity to embody subtle movements in emotions it develops into the language of an articulate self-conscious mind.Chapter One discusses The White Peacock, The Trespasser, and Sons and Lovers, with particular emphasis on the analysis of certain passages containing pictorial elements and visual analogies. Chapter Two provides a survey of Lawrence's thinking on art in the context of the aesthetic theories of John Ruskin and Roger Fry, together with a discussion of the style of The Rainbow and its similarities to the Expressionist aesthetic.Chapter Three offers a critical account of Lawrence's interest in Modern Art and Primitivism and the treatment of these themes from the viewpoints of such characters as Gudrun and Loerke in Women in Love