Eng426 20th century english literature

1.0 INTRODUCTION

David Herbert Lawrence (1885 – 1930) was one of the most controversial modernist writers. This is because of his inclination to depict vividly sexual relations in his works. Like Woolf and Joyce, he wrote autobiographically as he took bits and pieces from his life as materials for his fiction. His works are preoccupied with man’s relationship with man, his body, the vegetation or life around him.

0. OBJECTIVES

At the end of this unit you should be able to:

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  discuss the life and modernist inclination of D.H Lawrence,
  
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  highlight modernist features in Lady Chatterley’s Lover
  

0. MAIN CONTENT

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   D. H. Lawrence
   

David Herbert Lawrence was the fourth child of his family. His father, Arthur John Lawrence, was a miner and his mother a teacher but she had to work in a lace factory because of the family’s financial challenges. Lawrence spent his formative years in a coal mining town. In March 1912 Lawrence met Frieda Weekley with whom he was to share the rest of his life. Frieda Weekley was six years older than Lawrence and already had three children for Lawrence's former modern language professor, Ernest Weekley. Lawrence and Frieda Weekley dveloped to her parents’ home in Metz, a garrison town then in Germany near the disputed border with France. Their stay there included Lawrence's first brush with militarism, when he was arrested and accused of being a British spy before being released following an intervention from Frieda Weekley's father.
After this encounter, Lawrence left for a small hamlet to the south of Munich where he was joined by Frieda Weekley for their "honeymoon"

David Herbert Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. His works include, Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of technology and modernity. Lawrence in his works confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile which he called his "savage pilgrimage."At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents.

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