
Radicalizing Lawrence
Critical Interventions in the Reading and Reception of D.H. Lawrence's Narrative Fiction
Robert Burden(Author)
Rodopi (Publisher)
Published on 1. January 2000
Book
Paperback/Softback
387 pages
978-90-420-1303-2 (ISBN)
Description
In this study of D.H.Lawrence and critical theory, Robert Burden pays particular attention to the critical formations that underpin the reception history of the main novels, including the much maligned "leadership" novels, because strong readings have always contested the meaning and significance of Lawrence, and because there has been a persistent reluctance to approach his writing through post-structuralist theory. This study demonstrates in some detail that once Lawrence's texts are the objects of the newer critical paradigms, their principles of coherence are understood differently; and that older notions of textual unity are displaced by aesthetic structures of degrees of generic and linguistic destabilization. This enables a radicalizing of Lawrence's fiction by drawing out its deconstructive effects on his myth-making and essentialist notions of the self. The sexual identities represented in the fiction are read as experiments, or "thought adventures", as Lawrence himself characterized his work. The different approaches to Lawrence's writing in this study lead to a radical reassessment of his relationship to Modernism, especially in the light of the more elastic concept of Modernism in recent discussion, and one which traditional Lawrence scholars have ignored. What emerges is a more self-deconstructive Lawrence, with some surprising results.
Reviews / Votes
"...diligent and extensively researched..." - in: English, Vol. 53, No. 207 (Autumn 2004)"...Robert Burden's impressive and scholarly book... [..] ...a convenient, reliable and stimulating repository of information and ideas." - in: Years Work in English Studies, Vol. 81, No. 14 (2002)
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Publishing group
Brill
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
540 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-420-1303-2 (9789042013032)
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Schweitzer Classification
Content
Introduction: The Critical Formations of Lawrence Studies. 1. Sons and Lovers and the Possibility of a Psychoanalytic Criticism. 2. The Rainbow the Discursive Formations of History: Towards a Foucauldian Reading. 3. The Carnivalizing Novel: Bakhtinian Readings of Women in Love, The Lost Girl, and Mr Noon. 4. Deconstructing Masculinity 1: The Crisis of Post-War Masculinity and the Modernism of Aaron's Rod. 5. Deconstructing Masculinity 2: Male Bonding, Mythic Resolution and Textual Instabilities in Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent. 6. Lady Chatterley's Lover: Sexual Politics and Class Politics. Conclusions: Modernism, Modernity, and Critical Theory. Bibliography. Index.