A Functional Stylistic Approach to the Descriptions of Nature in Sons and Lovers

摘要

Sons and Lovers is one of the best novels written by D. H. Lawrence and has been widely studied due to its profundity. Among other things, the description of nature in the novel plays a very important role in illustrating the inner world of the characters, as well as reflecting the author's love for nature and objection to the dehumanizing and mechanized modern world brought by the industrialization. The study of the descriptions of nature is mainly carried out by literary critics, analyzing the symbolic meaning in them. This paper aims to analyze the stylistic features of the description of nature in this novel employing a functional-stylistic approach, on the basis of the theory of foregrounding. According to Halliday, foregrounding is prominence that is motivated. A feature that is brought into prominence will be "foregrounded" only if it relates to the meaning of the text as a whole. In Sons and Lovers, the description of nature sees an abundant use of material processes instead of the existential ones. The effect is that on the first level it depicts the liveliness of nature and on the second level it reinforces the influence that nature exerts on the characters. Therefore this use of material process can be seen as foregrounded and is worthy of further scrutiny for a better appreciation of the novel.