Didacticism and perception in D. H. Lawrence's late fiction.

• Grant number: 25/09716-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: December 01, 2025
• End date: April 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Thiago Rhys Bezerra Cass
• Grantee: Sofia Morena Teixeira Coelho
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project will examine the construction of a didactic effect in D. H. Lawrence's late fiction through a comparative analysis of the representations of perception in The Plumed Serpent (1926) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). Both novels narrate the transformation of their protagonists' consciousness, as they, upon entering into transgressive romantic relationships, struggle to resignify the way they perceive and interpret reality. This inflection is formalized in a series of narrative devices: the representation of antithetical models of perception; the intervention of an omniscient and proleptic narrator (who anticipates later developments in each narrative); and the disjunction between what the characters perceive and reality, allowing the endorsement of certain points of view to the detriment of others. Thus, we will investigate whether the represention of perception in The Plumed Serpent and Lady Chatterley's Lover may illuminate the persistence of a didactic orientation in high Modernist fiction. Additionally, we will argue that, although dynamics of perception appear in Lawrence's earlier fiction, the use of perception as a didactic device is only fully developed and incorporated as a narrative procedure in his later fiction, as a response to post-War crisis. We will therefore make use of methodologies that consider possible interactions between literary form and violence. As a result, we hope to reevaluate didacticism in Lawrence's fiction, an element often overlooked in Lawrentian studies.