D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference'

Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present
Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-0-19-926052-2
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 222 mm, Gewicht: 475 g

This important study from the prizewinning novelist and critic Amit Chaudhuri explores D. H. Lawrence's position as a 'foreigner' in the English canon. Focusing on the poetry, Chaudhuri examines how Lawrence's works, and Lawrence himself, have been read, and misread, in terms of their 'difference.' In contrast to the Leavisite project of placing Lawrence in the English 'great tradition,' this study demonstrates how Lawrence's writing brings into question the notion of 'Englishness' itself. It also shows how Lawrence's aesthetic sets him apart radically from both his Modernist contemporaries and his Romantic forbears.

The starting-point of this enquiry into Lawrentian 'difference' is, for the purposes of this study, the poetry, its stylistic features, the ways in which it has been read, and, importantly, involves a search for a critical language by which it, and its 'difference', might be addressed. In doing so, it takes recourse to Jacques Derrida's notions of 'grammatalogy' and 'ecriture', and Michel Foucault's notion of 'discourse'. Referring to Lawrence's travel writings about Mexico and Italy, his essays on European and Etruscan art, on Mexican marketplaces and rituals, and American literature, and especially to his poetic manifesto, 'The Poetry of the Present,' this book shows how Lawrence was working towards both a theory and a practice that critique the post-Enlightenment unitary European self.

Chaudhuri also, radically, allows his own post-colonial identity to inform his reading of the poetry, and to let the poems enter into a conversation with that identity. This is the first time that Lawrence's poetry has been discussed in this way, in the light of post-colonial and post-structuralist theory; it is also the first time a leading post-colonial writer of his generation has taken as his subject a major canonical English writer, and, through him, remapped the English canon as a site of 'difference.'

Zielgruppe

Academics and students of D. H. Lawrence, post-colonial literature and theory, and post-structuralist theory, as well as those interested in the writings of Amit Chaudhuri.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chaudhuri, Amit

Paulin, Tom

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- 1: Lawrence's 'Author-God'

- 2: Intertextuality in Birds, Beasts and Flowers

- 3: Lawrence's Pictography

- 4: An Alternative Aesthetic

- 5: Conclusion: Lawrence's 'Difference' and the Working Class

- Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Amit Chaudhuri is a well-known novelist and critic. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and Granta; and his works have appeared in most major publications in the world, including the New Yorker, the New Republic, the Observer, and the Guardian. In 2000, Chaudhuri was named as one of the Observer's 21 Writers for the Millennium.

Awards for his fiction include: first prize in the Betty Trask Awards; the Commonwealth Literature Prize for Best First Book (Eurasia); the Society of Authors' Encore Prize for Best Second Novel; the Southern Arts Literature Prize; and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. His third novel, Freedom Song, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and one of the New York Public Library's 25 Books to Remember, 2000.