Abstract
The story of Lady Chatterley’s Lovers publication is complex and multi-faceted. The novel had seen three complete drafts written before the author D. H. Lawrence had decided to publish the third and final version, which was banned in the United Kingdom upon publication. Published privately in Florence, Italy, the novel stirred great debate about its depictions of sex and its use of “four letter words”, and the years after Lawrence’s death saw the publication of the other two drafts. With the translations of versions one and three into Norwegian, Lady Chatterley’s Lover became the subject of several public debates spanning three decades. This study focuses on the production, transmission and reception of the Chatterley-versions in the Norwegian literary scene. The examined versions count both the original iterations of the novel as well as their Norwegian translations, as they pertain to the Norwegian discourse. The aim of this study is to ascertain whether the Norwegian Chatterley-discourse was concerned with the complex nature of the novel’s publication history. Secondly, it aims to establish whether its textual “instability” resulting from said history impeded upon the discussion of the novel’s themes or vice versa. Themes and theories pertaining to book history are central to both the method and the structure of this study, with book historians John Bryant and D. F. McKenzie providing most of the theoretical bedrock of my approach. Gérard Genettes “paratexts” structures my findings in the production and transmission of the Norwegian translations. Physical and digital archives obtained in the National Library make up most of the studied material. Presenting my most relevant findings through transmission study and reception study are this paper’s method. My findings show that although Lady Chatterley’s Lover’s textual instability is seldom noted by Norwegian public intellectuals, the novel’s turbulent publication history is partly referenced. Occasionally there will be made a passing reference to the novel’s three versions, but most mentions simply refer to the novel’s reputation as banned in the U.K. and U.S.A. Not until the translation and publication of Lady Chatterleys elsker (LCL) in 1952 was a wider floor for debate opened, and even then, the discussion was mainly focused around the novel’s depictions of sex. Still, the novel played an important role in testing the institutional waters that allowed salacious literature to be published and read.