D.H. Lawrence’s Literary Inheritors

298 Pages·1991·28.512 MB·English

by  Keith Cushman, Dennis Jackson (eds.)

D.H. LAWRENCE'S LITERARY INHERITORS
Also by Keith Cushman
D.H. LAWRENCE AT WORK
THE LETTERS OF D.H. LAWRENCE & AMY LOWELL,
1914--1925 (coeditor)
MEMOIR OF MAURICE MAGNUS (editor)
THE CHALLENGE OF D.H. LAWRENCE (coeditor)
Also by Dennis Jackson
D.H. LAWRENCE'S "LADY": A NEW LOOK AT "LADY
CHATTERLEY'S LOVER" (coeditor)
CRITICAL ESSAYS ON D.H. LAWRENCE (coeditor)
D.H. Lawrence's
Literary Inheritors
Edited by
Keith Cushman
and
Dennis Jackson
~
MACMILLAN
© Keith Cushman and Dennis Jackson 1991
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991
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First published 1991
Published by
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Companies and representatives
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
D.H. Lawrence's literary inheritors
1. English literature, 1900-. Influence of
Lawrence, D.H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930.
I. Cushman, Keith II. Jackson, Dennis.
820.900912
ISBN 978-1-349-21706-9 ISBN 978-1-349-21704-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21704-5
1098765432
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Notes on the Contributors viii
1 Lawrence and His Inheritors: An Introduction
Keith Cushman and Dennis Jackson 1
2 The Fox and the Phoenix: Tennessee Williams's
Strong Misreading of Lawrence
Lydia Blanchard 15
3 The Lawrentian Power and Logic of Equus
Stanley Renner 31
4 Sherwood Anderson's Dialogue with Lawrence's
Dark Gods
Barnett Guttenberg 46
5 Lawrence and Durrell: "ON THE SAME TRAM"
Ian S. MacNiven 61
6 A Cumbrian Rainbow: Melvyn Bragg's Tallentire
Trilogy
Del Ivan Janik 73
7 Lawrence's American Bad Boy Progeny: Henry Miller
and Norman Mailer
Kingsley Widmer 89
8 Floods of Female Desire in Lawrence and Eudora
Welty
Carol Siegel 109
v
vi Contents
9 'A Great Kick at Misery': Lawrence's and Drabble's
Rebellion Against the Fatalism of Bennett
Nora Foster Stovel 131
10 Blind, Intertextual Love: 'The Blind Man' and
Raymond Carver's 'Cathedral'
Keith Cushman 155
11 Joyce Carol Oates: Testing the Lawrentian
Hypothesis
Diane S. Bonds 167
12 The Melancholy Serpent: Body and Landscape in
Lawrence and William Carlos Williams
Bruce Clarke 188
13 Lawrence and Auden: The Pilgrim and the Citizen
George W. Bahlke 211
14 'A Whole Climate of Opinion': Lawrence at Black
Mountain
Leo Hamalian 228
15 Behind the Bestiaries: The Poetry of Lawrence and
Ted Hughes
Rand Brandes 248
Index 268
Acknowledgments
The collaborative effort that produced this book reminds us of the
sustaining pleasure that our participation in the international
circle of Lawrence scholars has provided over the years. By all
rights, Lawrentians should be contentious, but instead to a
remarkable degree they share a sense of common enterprise.
We owe most to Jim Cowan and Mike Squires, but we also wish
to acknowledge other members of the Lawrence community with
whom we have shared much intellectual camaraderie and many
good times: Michael Boldt, Nancy Boldt, Jim Boulton, Chong-wha
Chung, L.D. Clark, Bill Daleski, G.K. Das, Simonetta de Filippis,
Paul Delany, Paul Eggert, David Ellis, Langdon Elsbree, Larry
Gamache, Jacqueline Gouirand, Eleanor Green, Janice Harris,
Karl Henzy, Takeo Iida, Jiang Ming Ming, Jung-mai Kim, Mark
Kinkead-Weekes, Holly Laird, Liu Xianzhi, Hebe Mace, Fred
McDowell, Howard Mills, Yasuichiro Ohashi, Jean-Paul Pichar
die, Gerald Pollinger, Peter Preston, Chuck Rossman, Ginette
Roy, Judith Ruderman, Carol Sklenicka, Mark Spilka, Jack Stew
art, Betsy Wallace, Peter Whelan, John Worthen, and George
Zytaruk. Thanks to them all.
It would be possible to build an excellent, very large library of
studies of twentieth-century literature simply by collecting books
that acknowledge the support and assistance of Walt Litz. This is
another one of those books. He helped immensely.
We also wish to thank Laurence Pollinger Ltd. and the Estate of
Frieda Lawrence Ravagli for permission to quote from D.H.
Lawrence's works. Thanks, too, to Bob Langenfeld, Deb Bell, and
Sara Lamb.
* * * * * * *
Do tell as many people as you can that I'm a great writer and that my
influence is pure and sweet . ...
(Lawrence to Ernest Collings, 24 December 1912)
vii
Notes on the Contributors
George W. Bahlke is the author of The Later Auden: From "New
Year Letter" to "About the House" (1970). He is editing Critical
Essays on W.H. Auden for G.K. Hall and is working on a book
about E.M. Forster and Lawrence. He is Professor of English at
Hamilton College.
Lydia Blanchard has published numerous essays on Lawrence,
Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and feminist literary criticism in
books and journals. She is on the Editorial Board of The D.H.
Lawrence Review and is an officer in the Lawrence Society of North
America. She serves as Director of the Center for Multicultural
and Gender Studies at Southwest Texas State University, where
she also teaches in the English Department.
Diane S. Bonds is the author of Language and the Self in D.H.
Lawrence (1987) and of essays on various modern writers. She is
on the Editorial Board of The D.H. Lawrence Review and is writing
a book on contemporary American poetry. She is Assistant to the
Dean of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
Rand Brandes is the author of articles on Ted Hughes, Seamus
Heaney, and other contemporary poets. He teaches English and
Creative Writing at Lenoir-Rhyne College.
Bruce Clarke has completed book manuscripts on Lawrence and
the sublime and on the trope of metamorphosis in literature, and
has published articles and reviews on Lawrence, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Keats, William Carlos Williams, Pound, and other
figures. His essay on Lawrence and Williams in the present
collection is part of his Modernist Individualism, a book in progress
on Anglo-American literary connections during the early twen
tieth century. He teaches English at Texas Tech.
Keith Cushman is the author of D.H. Lawrence at Work (1978) and
has written widely on modern literature. He edited Lawrence's
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Memoir of Maurice Magnus (1987) and coedited The Letters of D.H.
Lawrence & Amy Lowell, 1914-1925 (1985) and The Challenge of D.H.
Lawrence (1990). An Editorial Board member of The D.H. Lawrence
Review and a past president of the Lawrence Society of North
America, he is Professor of English at the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro.
Barnett Guttenberg is the author of Web of Being: The Novels of
Robert Penn Warren (1980) and of essays on Lawrence and various
other modern writers. An Associate Professor of English at the
University of Miami, he is working on a book on Faulkner.
Leo Hamalian wrote D.H. Lawrence in Italy (1982) and edited D.H.
Lawrence: A Collection of Criticism (1973). He also wrote William
Saroyan: The Man and the Writer Remembered (1987), Ladies on the
Loose (1981), Burn After Reading (1978), and other books, and has
edited many volumes. He edits Ararat, a quarterly of arts and
letters, and serves on the editorial boards of Levant, The Literary
Review, and Columbia. He teaches contemporary literature at The
City College of New York.
Dennis Jackson is the editor of The D.H. Lawrence Review and a
past president of the Lawrence Society of North America. He
coedited Critical Essays on D.H. Lawrence (1988) and D.H. Law
rence's "Lady": A New Look at "Lady Chatterley'S Lover" (1985) and
has written articles on Lawrence and other topics for sundry
books and magazines. He has edited several scholarly journals,
including Irish Renaissance Annual. He teaches journalism and
English at the University of Delaware.
Del Ivan Janik is the author of The Curve of Return: D.H.
Lawrence's Travel Books (1981) and of essays and reviews on
Lawrence, Flann O'Brien, Gary Snyder, and other modern
writers. He is Professor and Chairman of English at the State
University of New York College at Cortland.
Ian S. MacNiven is the editor of The Durrell-Miller Letters 1935-80
(1988) and coeditor of Literary Lifelines: The Richard Aldington
Lawrence Durrell Correspondence (1981). He also coedited two
"Lawrence Durrell" special issues of Twentieth Century Literature
in 1987, and is completing the authorized biography of Durrell.