Between Animality And Humanity: A Study Of Lawrence's Animal Poems

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) is hailed as one of the greatest and most influential writers in the twentieth century. His abundant legacies range from fiction, poetry, short stories, literary criticism and personal letters. As a poet, Lawrence wrote between 1920 and 1923 a great number of animal poems, which are at his best. Unfortunately, the brilliance and fame of his novels has long obscured his successful poems. Yet it's held by more critics that it is only on the strength of the animal poems rich with life experiences and colorful imagery that Lawrence can establish his standing as an important figure in British literature in the twentieth century.This thesis, by analyzing his animal poems, is intended to explore the conflicts and balance between animality and humanity in Lawrence's poetry and on this basis arrive at Lawrence's view of nature, thus providing a new way for a better understanding of his poetry.The first chapter examines the animal nature described in "Fish" and "Snake." Right in these animals Lawrence finds "otherness"—a quality of being different from human beings, more immersed in nature, closer to genuine life. The poetic animals lie on two different levels: in a realistic sense, they are real life forms in nature; in a symbolic sense, they represent wild nature latent in human race. Lawrence insists that natural instincts are the source of life force, and that sex, as a basic instinct shared by human beings and animals, is a useful way to seek completeness and regain self-integrity. Such a realization is stated explicitly in "Tortoise shout" as the poet depicts the yell of the tortoise driven by natural instinct from under the very edge of the farthest horizon of life.The second chapter discusses human nature revealed in the animal poems. The first part analyses reason's repression of human nature. Lawrence has a profound understanding of the distorted human nature in industrialized Western culture and he artistically expresses his philosophical thinking about it in his masterpiece " Snake." Meanwhile, he criticizes the denial of natural instinct and distortion of human nature.The third chapter draws attention to the balance between humanity and animality. Mark Roberts once considered Lawrence a moralist with a sense of balance. Lawrence calls for a return to nature in pursuit of vitality since nature, for him, is a cure to the evils of modern industrial society as well as the source of life energy. Lawrence accepts the material basis of animal nature in the natural environment and together with its mechanical side. As is shown in "He-Goat," over-indulgence in sex is devastating.In composing poems, Lawrence shows his admiration for the essential sanity and goodness of our instinctive impulses, redefines human race and the relationship between human and nature, expresses his ethical philosophical thinking, and finally conveys his deep concern for human race's future and final destiny in the cosmos.