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

Vol.41,No.2(2015)

Renata Janktová

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2015-2-3

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/135025

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Abstract
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.

Keywords:
A. S. Byatt; Babel Tower; D. H. Lawrence; Lady Chatterley's Lover trial; parody

Pages:
43–56
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