Course module - D H Lawrence

Code : ENGL30642
Credit rating: 20
Semester : 2

Aims

To provide an overview of the work of D. H. Lawrence in different genres (including fiction, poetry, non-fiction);
To identify the major preoccupations of Lawrence’s writing, to place them in the context of the period, and to use relevant theoretical approaches to his work;
To practise close, intensive reading of selected items from some of these categories, and to reflect critically on the categories themselves;
To encourage students’ ability to work independently and in groups, and to carry out relevant research;
To foster skills in oral and written expression appropriate to work that will form part of the final degree assessment.

Objectives (Learning Outcomes)

By the end of the course unit the successful student will have demonstrated:

A good knowledge of the range and variety of Lawrence’s work, and the capacity to explore its depth and complexity;
The ability to identify and discuss the main pre-occupations of Lawrence’s writing, to see these in the context of Lawrence’s own time, and to deploy relevant ideas and reading strategies;
The skills of close reading necessary to explore its depth and complexity;
The ability to handle argument, and adduce illustration;
Skills in written expression appropriate to work that will form part of the final degree assessment.

NB: Being marked present for this class means attending properly prepared with the booklet and/or the right edition of the text for that week.

Assessment

One 3,000-word essay (50%); one 2-hour unseen written examination (50%)

The use of dictionaries in the examination is prohibited. This rule applies to all categories of students, including all Visiting Students.

Information

THIS COURSE IS NOT AVAILABLE AS FREE CHOICE.

Course Content

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) was the major English writer of his time. He was deeply concerned with issues of nationhood, the environment, gender, sexuality and class. On this course we will examine his work in its intellectual and social context. Included are texts from all periods of Lawrence’s career, including his breakthrough-novel Sons and Lovers, his wartime novel Women in Love, and writing from the 1920s when he went all round the world and produced Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Short stories and other writings by Lawrence will be discussed, along with contextual materials. There will be a course booklet available from the start of the semester with all the shorter primary texts. Additional supporting material will be provided on the course Blackboard site. Further reading and a seminar schedule will be available on the Preparatory Reading List pages of the EAS areas of the SAHC student intranet from June.

Course Materials

Tutor(s)

Booth, Howard Dr

Timetable

PROVISIONAL TIMETABLE FOR 2012-2013:

Lecture: Wednesday, 12.00-1.00
Seminar: Thursday, 11.00-1.00; Thursday, 2.00-4.00

Teaching Methods

One 1-hour lecture, plus one 2-hour seminar per week.

Preliminary reading

Sons and Lovers (Penguin; text edited by Carl Baron and Helen Baron), Women in Love (Penguin; text edited by Farmer, Worthen and Vasey), Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Penguin; text edited by Michael Squires), Sea and Sardinia (Penguin; intro Jill Franks, ed. Mara Kalnins); Complete Poems (Wordsworth editions, intro by David Ellis).

[When it comes to buying books for this course getting the right edition is important – e.g. old editions of Sons and Lovers are textually corrupt and 10% shorter than the text edited by the Barons. To see thumbnails of the covers of editions with the right text and to check their ISBNs see the course list on the Blackwells site at: http://www.readinglists.co.uk/rsl/student/sviewlist.dfp?id=20111 (There are of course other booksellers!)]

Introductory reading:
To get a sense of Lawrence’s life, work and ideas read John Worthen, D.H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (2005) before the course starts. For initial critical texts, I would suggest Howard J. Booth, ed., New D.H. Lawrence (2009) and Anne Fernihough, ed., The Cambridge Companion to D.H. Lawrence (2000) [available on the JRULM database Cambridge Companions Online]. Then:

Becket, Fiona. D.H. Lawrence: The Thinker as Poet. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997.
The Complete Critical Guide to D.H. Lawrence. London: Routledge, 2002.
Bell, Michael. D.H. Lawrence: Language and Being. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992
Carter, Angela. ‘Lorenzo as Closet Queen’ in Nothing Sacred: Selected Writings. London: Virago, 1982.
Clarke, Colin. The River of Dissolution: D.H. Lawrence and English Romanticism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969.
Ellis, David. D.H. Lawrence: Dying Game, 1922-1930. The Cambridge Biography of D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930, Volume 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Ellis, David, ed. D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love: A Casebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Ellis, David and Howard Mills, eds. D.H. Lawrence’s Non-Fiction: Art, Thought and Genre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Ellis, David and Ornella De Zordo, eds. D.H. Lawrence: Critical Assessments. 4 Vols. Mountfield: Helm Information, 1992.
Fernihough, Anne, D.H. Lawrence: Aesthetics and Ideology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Harrison, Andrew and John Worthen, eds., D.H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers: A Casebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Hulme, Peter and Tim Youngs. The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Kinkead-Weekes, Mark. D.H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile, 1912-1922. The Cambridge Biography of D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930, Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Leavis, F.R. D.H. Lawrence: Novelist. London: Chatto and Windus, 1955.
Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Lawrence. London: Chatto and Windus, 1976.
Lodge, David 'Lawrence, Dostoevsky, Bakhtin: D. H. Lawrence and Dialogic Fiction,' Renaissance and Modern Studies, 29 (1985) 16-32. It is also collected in his book After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism (1990)
MacLeod, Sheila. D.H. Lawrence’s Men and Women. London: Paladin, 1985.
Reeve, Neil. Reading Late Lawrence. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2003.
Roberts, Neil. D.H. Lawrence, Travel and Cultural Difference. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Judith Ruderman, D.H. Lawrence and the Devouring Mother: the Search for a Patriarchal Ideal of Leadership (Duke: Duke University Press, 1984).
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
Weldon, Thornton. D.H. Lawrence: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1993.
Worthen, John. D.H Lawrence and the Idea of the Novel. London: Macmillan, 1979.
Worthen, John. D.H. Lawrence: The Early Years, 1885-1912. The Cambridge Biography of D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930, Volume 1. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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