Explores D. H. Lawrence’s environmentalism and suggests new ways of reading his works in the Anthropocene
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Considers, for the first time, Lawrence’s emergent sense of environmentalism
Both canonical and less well-known works by Lawrence are discussed
Ground-breaking research reveals new conceptions of Lawrence such as the visionary animality of his paintings and his proto-veganism
Radical contributions to our thinking about the Anthropocene arise from these readings of Lawrence’s works
How do the works of D. H. Lawrence speak to readers in the age of the Anthropocene? In this volume, sixteen scholars from six countries explore different answers to this question, considering Lawrence’s novels, short fiction, poetry, paintings and his often-provocative polemical essays. This comprehensive survey of Lawrence’s writings and artworks reveals that his familiar enquiries into human nature were always situated within the energies, large and local, of what he calls ‘the cosmos’ which is our shared home. Lawrence challenges his readers by his movements between cynicism and idealism, dissolution and creativity, critique and regeneration – the very tensions that confront us today in the face of industrial capitalism and environmental deterioration. This revelation of Lawrence’s passionate ‘environmentalism’ not only fills what has been described as ‘a gaping hole in Lawrence studies’. It also drills down into the heart of the problems holding back an adequate response to the climate crisis by offering fundamental values for recovery.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Reading Strategies for the Anthropocene Terry Gifford
Part I. Reading Lawrence’s Environmentalism 1. Rehabilitating Lawrence for the Anthropocene Fiona Becket 2. Lawrence’s Environmentalism: From ‘Pastoral’ to Anthropocene Rebirth Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy 3. Against Rome and Modernity: ‘naturalness verging on the commonplace’ in Sketches of Etruscan Places Neil Roberts
Part II. ‘Interrelatedness’ Redefines the Human 4. ‘Its own weird anima’: Lawrence ‘Unpaints’ the Human Carrie Rohman 5. Lawrence’s Embodied Guide to Navigating the Anthropocene in Women in Love Marie Bertrand 6. Relationality in Lawrence’s Non-Fiction Tim Gupwell
Part III. ‘New connections’ with Animals and Other Beings 7. Anthropocene Aesthetics in Lawrence’s Later Fiction Harry Acton 8. Carrying the Other in D. H. Lawrence’s ‘The Man Who Loved Islands’ and Last Poems Maria Trejling 9. Lawrence and Proto-Veganism Catherine Brown
Part IV. ‘Interpenetration’ of the Vegetal 10. Forests in Lawrence and Philippe Descola Fiona Fleming 11. Lawrence and Scale Patrick Armstrong 12. Lawrence’s Vegetal Poetics and the Anthropocene Chao Xie
Part V. ‘Re-establish the living organic connections with the cosmos’ 13. Complicity and Critique Jeff Wallace 14. Nature, Transformation and the Frankfurt School in Lawrence’s Late Fiction Howard J. Booth 15. Beginning at the End: Lawrence’s Apocalypse as Eco-Revelation Adrian Tait
After years in the critical wilderness, D. H. Lawrence is ripe for a revival and this deserves to be the book where it begins. Once seen primarily as a harbinger of the sexual revolution, Lawrence was in more profound ways a prophet who foresaw the damage inherent in modernity's alienation from the natural world. These essays by a range of distinguished Lawrentian scholars reveal the prescience of his vision, as witnessed throughout his extraordinarily productive and varied writing career.
Terry Gifford is Visiting Research Fellow at Bath Spa University’s Research Centre for Environmental Humanities and Profesor Honorifico at the University of Alicante, Spain. A co-founder of British ecocriticism, he is the author of D. H. Lawrence, Ecofeminism and Nature (2023), Pastoral (2020), Green Voices (2011), Reconnecting With John Muir: Essays in Post-Pastoral Practice (2006), The Joy of Climbing (2004) and Teaching A Level English Literature (with John Brown, 1989). He has also written or edited seven books on Ted Hughes, most recently Ted Hughes in Context (2018). His eighth collection of poetry is A Feast of Fools (2018). He is currently writing an ecofeminist reading of Lawrence’s short stories.
