An organism of words body language in the letters, diaries, and novels of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf

Abstract

This thesis investigates body language in the letters, diaries, and novels of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf It engages with literary critical readings of their work, research from non-verbal communication studies, and philosophical accounts of the body in order to offer detailed readings of their presentation of non-verbal behaviour. Throughout the thesis, the term "body language" is used to describe the writing of the body and non-verbal communication within certain texts and the way in which the language of these texts is inflected by the body. One particular concern of the study is the importance of embodiment to the writing of perception in these works. The phenomenological writing of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is therefore a touchstone for readings which foreground the senses and a sensuous engagement with space. This strand of the thesis is informed by theories of space as well as situating itself amongst contemporary accounts of the Modern period that consider the influence of technology on these very senses. A further concern of the thesis, then, is to examine the vocabulary developed and employed by these Modern writers in order to write this new relationship of the human with technology and space. Their turn towards a posthuman poetics of perception gives voice to these new imbrications and to their appraisal, through the senses, of what it means to be human. This is in keeping with the general purpose of the thesis, namely, to evaluate the techniques and styles that these authors use in order to write the body and body language, ones in which they confront the paradox of writing non-verbal behaviour within their inherently verbal modes.