Collection(s) : Horizons anglophones
Paru le 04/11/2014 | Broché 350 pages
Public motivé
translated by the author | foreword by Keith Cushman
This study, based on the numerous Bible references found in Aaron's Rod (1922), Kangaroo (1923) and The Plumed Serpent (1926), shows how the constant borrowings from Bible sources voice D.H. Lawrence's political thought. In many ways, Lawrence's relation to the Bible recalls Nietzsche's, however his appropriation of religious rites and sacred texts aims at questioning the political role of man in a community in terms of power and submission while positioning man in the cosmos.
Still under the trauma of his war experience, Lawrence introduces characters who, mirroring his own despair, reject their native country and leave in search of a new political order. They question their relation to God, to homeland and to marital bonds, intertextual dialogism voicing their doubts. In exile, their distancing from the power of the Word, which represents European political power, increases, as does the amount of transformation the biblical text undergoes. Eventually confronted with ideologies such as Fascism and Marxism, the characters state their opinions by weaving intertextual links with the Bible. Thus, to voice his political answers, Lawrence's writing becomes highly apocalyptic.
By coupling politics and the Bible, the study offers an original reading of the so-called leadership novels which qualify as political essays.
Foreword written by Keith Cushman, Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the former president of the D.H. Lawrence Society of North America and a recipient of the Harry T. Moore Award for Lifetime Contributions to D.H. Lawrence Studies.
Shirley Bricout completed a Ph. D. on D.H. Lawrence at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 which was later published by the Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée. She has contributed several articles to Études lawrenciennes (Paris X) and Études britanniques contemporaines (Montpellier 3).
