D.H. Lawrence's philosophy of nature

Zang, Tianying (2006) D.H. Lawrence's philosophy of nature. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

This study examines Lawrence's views of nature and their relations to perspectives drawn from Oriental traditions and philosophies. Many of Lawrence's non-Christian perspectives concerning the universe and man's relationship with nature bear strong affinities with Eastern thought systems, particularly his understanding of such fundamental matters as the enigma of nature, nature's duality and oneness, the mutual identity between man and nature, issues of god and evolution, mind and body, life and death, and sexuality, and concerns with intuition, spontaneity and primitivism. Lawrence met with hostility and prejudice from the literary world partly because some of his viewpoints were misread and misunderstood. However, they can be to a large degree explained and justified by traditional Oriental thought. In Lawrence's understanding of man's integrity and "living wholeness", we have his "indecent" proposition of sexuality, his "strange" assertion of blood consciousness and stress upon the solar plexus, his rejection of mind and intellect, and his preference for desire over ideology, and for primitivism over industrial materialism. These are views parallel to those of Taoism, though they also have their traces in the Western scientific readings which Lawrence was familiar with. Lawrence's transcendental attitude towards nature accounts for his extraordinary sensitivity to the natural world, and for his radical criticism of modern civilizations, sciences and the mechanical life, particularly in terms of financial motivation. The study of Lawrence's philosophy of nature suggests that Lawrence is an outstanding example of twentieth-century Romanticism. Furthermore, in Lawrence and in his work, we see a prominent figure in the development of a new environmental consciousness in literature.

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