The Cambridge Companion to D. H. Lawrence

Description

The Cambridge Companion to D. H. Lawrence contains fourteen chapters by leading international scholars. They offer a series of alternative perspectives on one of the most important and controversial writers of the twentieth century. These specially-commissioned essays offer diverse and stimulating readings of Lawrence's major novels, short stories, poetry and plays, and place Lawrence's writing in a variety of literary, cultural, and political contexts, such as modernism, sexual and ethnic identity, and psychoanalysis. The concluding chapter addresses the vexed history of Lawrence's critical reception throughout the twentieth century. The volume, which will be of interest to scholars and students alike, features a detailed chronology and a comprehensive guide to further reading. COVER HALF-TITLE SERIES-TITLE TITLE COPYRIGHT CONTENTS NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CHRONOLOGY ABBREVIATIONS Letters of Lawrence Works of Lawrence The Cambridge Biography of Lawrence INTRODUCTION NOTES 1 TEXTS 1 Ideas, histories, generations and beliefs: the early novels to Sons and Lovers The puzzle of the early work: The White Peacock Lawrence and nineteenth-century evolutionary argument Love choices: The Trespasser Sons and Lovers: point of view and the unconscious NOTES 2 Narrating sexuality: The Rainbow ‘The Lawrence problem’ The Rainbow Contexts NOTES 3 Sex and the nation: ‘The Prussian Officer’ and Women in Love Lawrence’s subjection Eros and brownness Love and sacrifice Eros and blackness NOTES 4 Decolonising imagination: Lawrence in the 1920s Imagining – and its difficulty Early encounters with American Indians Mexico and ‘Quetzalcoatl’ Kiowa essays ‘The Woman Who Rode Away’ St. Mawr and ‘The Princess’ The challenge of the Hopi Mexico again – and a contrast NOTES 5 Work and selfhood in Lady Chatterley’s Lover The labouring self Physical consciousness Degeneration and industry Physical labour NOTES 6 Lawrence’s tales ‘Queer dark corners’: the early tales ‘A new manner’: the novelettes Laughter and bathos NOTES 7 Lawrence’s poetry Rhyming Poems Look! We Have Come Through! Birds, Beasts and Flowers Lawrence’s late poetry NOTES 8 Lawrence as dramatist Beginning as a dramatist Lawrence and the theatre of his time 1918–1925 The 1960s Dramatic interplay, dramatic character and the dramatic narrator NOTES 2 CONTEXTS AND CRITICAL ISSUES 9 The biographical issue: lives of Lawrence Aesthetic autonomy versus biography: the 1930s and after The young Lawrence reconsidered The Lawrence of the war years The later Lawrence Some reflections on the new Lawrence NOTES 10 Lawrence and modernism Time Personal identity Artistic impersonality Gender History and myth Truth of feeling NOTES 11 Lawrence and the politics of sexual politics Introduction: the priest of love? Mistrusting the tale: the novelist and the novel Representation and the politics of recognition Natural communism: the politics of Lawrence’s reception Sexual politics: the personal versus the political Return to Bestwood: St. Mawr and the displacement of realism Conclusion: sexual politics as the displacement of politics NOTES 12 Lawrence and psychoanalysis ‘[S]ix little essays on Freudian Unconscious’ A new idiom Questions of self and body NOTES 13 Apocalypse now (and then). Or, D. H. Lawrence and the swan in the electron Prophecy versus postmodernism: Lawrence at the millennium Wringing the neck of sophistication: Lawrence and modernism The lady and the dragon: Lawrence and apocalypse Dark matters: beyond the millennium NOTES 14 Post-mortem: Lawrence’s critical and cultural legacy The risen phoenix Posthumous controversies: the 1930s Reviving Lawrence: the 1950s The ‘Lady Chatterley’ trial Canonisation and demonisation: 1960–1970 Sexual conundrums Future directions NOTES GUIDE TO FURTHER READING The works of D. H. Lawrence NOVELS SHORT FICTION POETRY PLAYS NON-FICTION LETTERS Criticism and scholarship (A) BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES (B) BIOGRAPHIES (C) ANTHOLOGIES AND ESSAY COLLECTIONS (D) GENERAL STUDIES (E) INDIVIDUAL NOVELS (F) SHORT FICTION (G) POETRY (H) PLAYS (I) NON-FICTION (J) SELECTED ESSAYS INDEX