D.H. Lawrence and Italian Futurism: A Study of Influence

by Andrew Harrison

Overview

The significance of D. H. Lawrence’s reading of two Italian Futurist volumes in the summer of 1914 is widely acknowledged, but the nature of its significance has not been more closely examined, nor traced through his major fictional and discursive writings of the Great War and its aftermath. D. H. Lawrence and Italian Futurism addresses the oversight, firstly by examining the context to Lawrence’s now famous June 1914 letters concerning Futurism; secondly, by placing Futurism – and Lawrence’s interest in Futurism – in the light of the movement’s intellectual indebtedness to nineteenth-century Naturalism; and, thirdly, by providing new readings of The Rainbow, Women in Love and Studies in Classic American Literature which draw on these contextual materials. The book’s form will make it attractive to scholars and students of European modernism as well as to those interested in the works of D. H. Lawrence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789042011953
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	07/28/2003
Series:	Textxet: Studies in Comparative Literature Series
Pages:	235
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 8.66(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations (Primary Sources)
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter One Lawrence and the “Edwardian Novelists”
Chapter Two “Something Of What I Am After”: Lawrence, Marinetti and Zola’s Naturalism
Chapter Three The Emergence of a New Vision: From the “Burns Novel” Fragments to The Rainbow
Chapter Four Futurist Articulacy and the Narrative of Fate in Women in Love
Chapter Five “Futurist Long Before Futurism Found Paint”: The Allusions to Italian Futurism in Studies in Classic American Literature
Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The intellectual and artistic history of D.H. Lawrence’s work remains sadly uncharted. Our current maps reveal the largely unexplored peninsular of Freud, the misty headland of Nietzsche, the extensive archipelago of Whitman. But what is the nature of the country’s interior? Andrew Harrison has written just the kind of contextualizing study which is vital if we are ever to recover Lawrence as a fully-historicized figure; he brilliantly uncovers a portion of the historical landscape.” – John Worthen, Professor of D. H. Lawrence Studies, University of Nottingham

From the Publisher