D.H. Lawrence's Novels: A New Historical Approach (Hardbound - 2009)

In this book, the author analyses Lawrence’s ideas and visions in the perspective of New Historicism, and shows how these ideas and visions are useful to understand the world better and deeper. New Historicism as a critical practice draws on the earlier Marxist criticism, structuralism, feminist criticism and deconstruction. New historicists focus on the multiple and contradictory material practices interconnecting the historical events as contexts of production and reception. Since New Historicism stresses on the intimate relationship between literature, culture and history, there is a constant interaction of history, culture and ideology of the past with the present trends and situations. As a result, reading of texts of past is connected with the personal life history of the writer, the letters written by him to his contemporaries and his world views reflected in these marginal writings.

An analysis of Lawrence’s letters and major novels reveals that contemporary man leads a life of falsity and negativity, and has lost his freshness as well as his rhythm by losing the vital contact with the “motion of life”, thereby turning into a “working machine”. He has come to this “deadness” because of his disconnection with the “responsive vegetation of nature”, the source of vitality for renewal of the body. In the context of such human conditions in our own civilization, a study of Lawrence’s works in the “new historical perspective” is a relevant and worthwhile pursuit. The social, political and cultural conditions prevailing in Lawrence’s time strongly influenced his artistic mind and creativity. The suicidal tendency of human beings to destroy each other through War (World War I) influenced his artistic vision quite significantly, which becomes explicit in his major works.

D. H. Lawrence expresses the idea that man is living “a lie”, leading “a life of falsity, negativity and deadness”. The decline in human relationship is a current trend for man’s excessive indulgence in “money, power and machine”. This trend can however be reversed only if man leads a life of spontaneity based on “tenderness and sensitivity”, and tries to revitalize a mechanically dead people in “a rotten, dead civilization”. The book explores some new areas of meaning in human psyche. It will be immensely useful to the students, teachers and researchers who are pursuing their studies in English literature in general, and on D.H. Lawrence and his major novels in particular.

Prakash Chandra Pradhan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, U.P., India. After his Postgraduation from Utkal University (Orissa), he also obtained his M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from this University. He had been teaching English Language and Literature in different colleges of Orissa under Utkal University before he taught at B.H.U. He received the “Teacher Fellowship” from the UGC and “Teacher Research Grant” from Indo-American Centre for International Studies (formerly ASRC). He was sanctioned funds by the UGC for his research project on D.H. Lawrence. Dr. Pradhan has published a number of research papers, book reviews, critical essays in anthologies and journals of national and international repute. He has also published three books, namely D.H. Lawrence’s Novels: A Stylistic Approach (2002); Timirara Surya (2002), a collection of poems in Oriya and Sibavai (2004), an Oriya novel by Gopinath Mohanty, translated into English. Currently, Dr. Pradhan is working on a research project on “A Postcolonial Reading of V.S. Naipaul’s Works” and also guiding research scholars for Ph.D.