Love, Desire and the Body in D.H. Lawrence’s Novels, Novellas and Short Stories
D.H. Lawrence is not only well known for his sexually (more or less) explicit novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, but he has also been called "The Priest of Love" and "The Poet of Love". Though he has long been accepted as one of the major English writers of the 20th century, many readers continue to consider his novels as either pornographic or replete with arcane messages and mantras. In order to demonstrate that most of these prejudices are unfounded and that Lawrence is not only an important author but can indeed be fun to read, this seminar will concentrate on his concepts of love, sex, desire, and the body, taking major philosophical discourses of the late 19th and early 20th century into account. In order to do this, we will take a closer look at a selection of Lawrence’s shorter texts such as The Fox, St. Mawr or The Virgin and the Gipsy, since these do not only contain most of the ‘big’ ideas typical of his novels such as masculinity vs. femininity, nature vs. culture/mechanisation, or vitality vs. death-in-life but are also aesthetically convincing and fun to read.
Please buy and read before the beginning of the term:
D.H. Lawrence. The Virgin and the Gipsy. London: Vintage, 1992 (or any other edition).
-----. The Fox. London: Hesperus Press, 2003 (or any other edition).
-----. St. Mawr. London: Penguin, 1971 (or any other edition).
Some of Lawrence’s poems will be provided via OPAL. A syllabus and a bibliography will be available at the first meeting.
This course prepares students for “Schriftliches Staatsexamen: Klausur Englische Literaturwissenschaft” in the fall of 2022