David Herbert Lawrence
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 532.
· One of the most exceptional figures
· Described as a rebel (trends, ideologies)
· Victorianism for him – a certain mentality, way of life
· He criticized
o Hypocrisy, taboos, all kinds of inhibitions
o Social convenances (the important thing was to fit to them)
o Reduction of personality
o Limited freedom of the intellectual
· Ignoring the body was what he didn't like
· Father – coal miner, Northern England, his mother was a teacher
· He criticized the “Bloomsbury Group” – England not only mad of people from Oxford, people having parties etc
· Much more wealth to the human being than social convenances, intellect itself, but also body desire, eroticism
· He heard Freud's theories, they expressed what he himself thought
· His favourable opinion of Freud changed – he wrote polemical essays to Freud's works
· He criticized Freud for reduction of complexity of human life to only desires, Freud oversimplified the nature of human mind
· The life of people – intellectual development, desires, sexual desires
· He was also a painter (exhibitions)
· Only literature can show complexity of human life/being, no limitations
· State of the civilization and society
o Industrialization, machines, factories, production and consumption – he believed that it was dangerous, working in a factory for 8 hours like alienation
o Loss of humanity
o People are like machines
o Dangerous for personal mentality
o The rich, factory owners – they start thinking about people in the categories of loss & profit
· Portrayal of Lawrence – “Point Counterpoint”
· Lawrence's characters represent\support his point of view, the other ones are criticized
· He travelled a lot (Mexico, Australia
· Novel, short stories, dramas, travel books
o “Sons & Lovers” 1913
§ 1st important novel
§ Key to his autobiography
§ Bildungsroman + Kunstlerroman
§ Young man growing to be a painter
§ Stadium of relationship between son & mother, without simplification and sensualisation
§ The mother loves her sons but somehow crashes them, feeling of hate, unpleasant things
§ Growing as a complicated process
o “The Rainbow” & “Women in Love”
§ Family sage
§ 1st generation – the most successful
o “Lady Chatterley's Lover” 1928
§ The most controversial novel, scandalous, pornographic content, officially banned in England
§ finally published in 1963 because of censorship
§ nowadays conventional, conservative, traditional
§ novel of ideas
§ Lady Chatterley's maries a man who gets paralyzed during 1 WW, she takes a lover
§ Some love scenes
§ They discuss ideology, society, politics
§ Feminists do not like it – women should be passive, conservative
§ Class system – big mistake of British society
§ Healing society of social and sexual barriers
· His novels started to by more like sermons at the end of his life, he became more pathetic
· He was a spontaneous writer, if sth was good he made no corrections like J.Joyce
· He had no distance to his characters, structures etc
· The English didn't develop expressionist literature, Lawrence was an exception
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