The Visionary D. H. Lawrence
Beyond Philosophy and Art

Lawrence's work set in the context of a tradition of visionary poet-philosophers and thinkers.

Robert E. Montgomery (Author)

9780521112420, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 4 June 2009

260 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.34 kg

"...provides us with a history of ideas behind Lawrence's texts, and encourages us to make our own further connections between Lawrence and his 'parallel' minds. The prose, given the complexity of the subject matter, is on the whole clear and compelling....The Visionary D.H. Lawrence is a useful companion piece for our readings of Lawrence's works." Judith Ruderman, English Literature in Transition

D. H. Lawrence is often seen either as an artist whose novels are spoiled by the intrusion of ideas or as a philosopher whose ideas happen to be expressed in fiction; neither of these perspectives does justice to the unity and complexity of Lawrence's vision. In The Visionary D. H. Lawrence Robert E. Montgomery places Lawrence in the tradition both of great Romantic poet-philosophers, including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Carlyle and Emerson, and of visionary thinkers Nietzsche, Heraclitus and Jacob Boehme. Dr Montgomery reveals a context which illuminates Lawrence's fiction and non-fiction, discusses his work in depth, and shows how his place in the prophetic-poetic tradition differs from that of his contemporaries Eliot and Yeats. The result is an exploration of the vision that informs and unifies Lawrence's work.

1. Introduction
2. Flesh, Word, and Holy Ghost: Lawrence and Schopenhauer
3. The passionate struggle into conscious being: Lawrence and Nietzsche
4. 'A dry soul is best': Lawrence and Heraclitus
5. The science of the soul: Lawrence and Boehme
6. Conclusion: Romanticism and Christianity.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]