Reshaping meanings: D.H. Lawrence and the 'Lady Chatterley trial' in A.S. Byatt's Babel Tower

Title: Reshaping meanings: D.H. Lawrence and the 'Lady Chatterley trial' in A.S. Byatt's Babel Tower
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2015, vol. 41, iss. 2, pp. [43]-56
Extent
[43]-56
  • ISSN
    0524-6881 (print)
    1805-0867 (online)
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
 

Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.

Abstract(s)
The elaborate textual mosaic of A. S. Byatt's novel Babel Tower (1996) contains the records of two fictive court trials, a divorce hearing and a literary obscenity trial. The rendering of the latter is significantly shaped by both explicit references and implicit links to the 1960 trial of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. Whilst the direct references revive the case as a precedent for the fictive trial set in the late 1960s and help create a particular historical context, the implicit links derive from the involvement and presentation of D. H. Lawrence in Babel Tower and other parts of the Frederica Quartet. The article looks at how the utilization of the historical process with "Lady Chatterley", which works as a thematic link between the trials and informs the staging of Byatt's obscenity case, participates in the parodic make-up of the novel and the interpretation of Lawrence's literary legacy.
References
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