D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity - by Indrek Männiste (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

While the dehumanizing effects of technology, modernity, and industrialization have been widely recognized in D. H. Lawrence's works, no book-length study has been dedicated to this topic.

This collection of newly commissioned essays by a cast of international scholars fills a genuine void and investigates Lawrence's peculiar relationship with modern technology and modernity in its many and varied aspects. Addressing themes such as pastoral vs. industrial, mining, war, robots, ecocriticism, technologies of the self, film, poetic devices of technology, entertainment, and many others, these essays help to reevaluate Lawrence's complicated standing within the modernist literary tradition and reveal the true theoretical wealth of a writer whose whole life and work, according to T.S. Eliot, "was an assertion of what the modern world has lost."

Review Quotes

"A great addition to D.H. Lawrence's scholarship. Over the last two centuries, technology and mechanization have overwhelmed human beings, changing our lives at an alarming rate. This very thoughtful collection of essays highlights powerfully how Lawrence's message is a never-ending struggle to cope with innovation and preserve our humanity." --Stefania Michelucci, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Genoa, Italy, and author of Space and Place in the Works of D.H. Lawrence (2002)

"D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity sees Lawrence, as we might expect, as an opponent of the technological age. The main focus though-which moves Lawrence to the centre of debates about modernism and the machine-is on the writing as a profoundly thoughtful exploration of the new world that was coming into being. Editor Indrek Männiste shows, in both the introduction and his own chapter, that Lawrence was particularly interested in the consequences for the body and mental life. The contributors pursue the volume's themes excitingly and convincingly in chapters that range in focus from green cultural critique to Lawrence's 'robot poems', from trains to the First World War." --Howard J. Booth, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Manchester, UK, and editor of New D.H. Lawrence (2010)

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