D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity

by Indrek Männiste

Overview

While the dehumanizing effects of technology, modernity, and industrialization have been widely recognized in D. H. Lawrence's works, no book-length study has been dedicated to this topic.

This collection of newly commissioned essays by a cast of international scholars fills a genuine void and investigates Lawrence's peculiar relationship with modern technology and modernity in its many and varied aspects. Addressing themes such as pastoral vs. industrial, mining, war, robots, ecocriticism, technologies of the self, film, poetic devices of technology, entertainment, and many others, these essays help to reevaluate Lawrence's complicated standing within the modernist literary tradition and reveal the true theoretical wealth of a writer whose whole life and work, according to T.S. Eliot, "was an assertion of what the modern world has lost."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501367564
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/20/2020
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Indrek Männiste is Researcher of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Tartu, Estonia, and author of Henry Miller: The Inhuman Artist: A Philosophical Inquiry (Bloomsbury, 2013).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Foreword
Michael Bell (University of Warwick, UK)
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Chronology
Introduction
Indrek Männiste (University of Tartu, Estonia)
1. D. H. Lawrence's Long Passage from a Rural to an Industrial World
Nick Ceramella (University of Trento, Italy)
2. "Colliers is a discontented lot": "The Miner at Home" in the Nation and the 1912 National Coal Strike
Annalise Grice (Nottingham Trent University, UK)
3.D. H. Lawrence among the Early Modern Bohemians
Katherine Toy Miller (Angelo State University, USA)
4. D. H. Lawrence and "The Machine Incarnate": Robots Among the "Nettles"
Tina Ferris (Independent Writing and Editing Professional and D.H. Lawrence scholar, USA)
5. "Men No More Than the Subjective Material of the Machine": D. H. Lawrence, Machinery and War-time Psychology
Andrew Harrison (University of Nottingham, UK)
6. To Produce, or Not to Produce, That Is the Question: Technology, Democracy and War in Women in Love
Gaku Iwai (Konan University, Japan)
7. Hierarchy, Beauty, and Freedom: D. H. Lawrence's Response to Techno-Industrial Modernity
Colin D. Pearce (Clemson University, USA)
8. "The Art of Living": D. H. Lawrence's Technologies of Self
Jeff Wallace (CardiffMetropolitan University, UK)I
9. Engineering Away Humanity: Lawrence on Technology and Mental Consciousness in Lady Chatterley's Loverand Pansies
Andrew Keese (Texas Tech University, USA)
10. Lawrence's Allotropic "Gladiatorial": Resisting the Mechanization of the Human in Women in Love
Thalia Trigoni (University of Cambridge, UK)
11. Green Lawrence?: Consciousness, Ecology and Poetry
Fiona Becket (University of Leeds, UK)
12. D. H. Lawrence and Film: Reconsidering Fidelity in Ken Russell's Women in Love
Earl G. Ingersoll (College at Brockport, USA)
13. Poetics of Technology: D. H. Lawrence and the Well-Tempered Counterpoint
Indrek Männiste (University of Tartu, Estonia)
14. Trains in D. H. Lawrence's Creative Writing
Helen Baron (Independent Scholar and Editor, UK)
15. On Entertainment: The Lassitude of Lawrence's Dead Novel
Dominic Jaeckle (Goldsmiths College, UK)

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"A great addition to D.H. Lawrence's scholarship. Over the last two centuries, technology and mechanization have overwhelmed human beings, changing our lives at an alarming rate. This very thoughtful collection of essays highlights powerfully how Lawrence's message is a never-ending struggle to cope with innovation and preserve our humanity." --Stefania Michelucci, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Genoa, Italy, and author of Space and Place in the Works of D.H. Lawrence (2002)

"D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity sees Lawrence, as we might expect, as an opponent of the technological age. The main focus though-which moves Lawrence to the centre of debates about modernism and the machine-is on the writing as a profoundly thoughtful exploration of the new world that was coming into being. Editor Indrek Männiste shows, in both the introduction and his own chapter, that Lawrence was particularly interested in the consequences for the body and mental life. The contributors pursue the volume's themes excitingly and convincingly in chapters that range in focus from green cultural critique to Lawrence's 'robot poems', from trains to the First World War." --Howard J. Booth, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Manchester, UK, and editor of New D.H. Lawrence (2010)

From the Publisher