D. H. Lawrence and 'difference': Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present

This important study from the prizewinning novelist and critic Amit Chaudhuri explores D. H. Lawrence's position as a "foreigner" in the English canon. Focussing on the poetry, Chaudhuri examines how Lawrence's works, and Lawrence himself, have been read, and misread, in terms of their "difference." This is the first time that Lawrence's poetry has been discussed in the light of post-colonial and post-structuralist theory; it is also the first time a leading post-colonial writer of his generation has taken as his subject a major canonical English writer, and, through him, remapped the English canon as a site of "difference."

About the Author :
Amit Chaudhuri is a well-known novelist and critic. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and Granta; and his works have appeared in many major publications, including the New Yorker, the New Republic, the Observer, and the Guardian. In 2000, Chaudhuri was named as one of the Observer's 21 Writers for the Millennium. Awards for his fiction include: first prize in the Betty Trask Awards; the Commonwealth Literature Prize for Best First Book (Eurasia); the Society of Authors' Encore Prize for Best Second Novel; the Southern Arts Literature Prize; and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. His third novel, Freedom Song, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and one of the New York Public Library's 25 Books to Remember, 2000.

Review :
"D.H. Lawrence and 'Difference' succeeds in making us appreciate how much more there is to Lawrence than we know or think we know.... Chaudhuri is excellent on Lawrence's encounter with non-European cultures, as in Mornings in Mexico, but also on simplistic attempts to recuperate him as the noble savage of modernism."--David Wheatley, Irish Times "In some superbly original chapters, crafted with the attunement to verbal detail of a practising poet, [Chaudhuri] shows that Lawrence's poems are less framed and finished products than fragments of a larger discourse.... Genuinely groundbreaking and exciting.... This is a poet's criticism, shrewd and deft, full of inside knowledge and technical know-how.... D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference' is probably the single best study of Lawrence's poetry to date."--Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books "Through the sheer cumulative force of its carefully nuanced readings, Amit Chaudhuri's argument is wholly convincing. Here is a Lawrence who consistently challenged logocentrism rather than embodying it, and for whom the idea of a reader or writer with completely clean hands is a dangerous delusion, aesthetically and politically."--Times Literary Supplement "Elegantly and gracefully [shows] how Lawrence is one of the most radical, risk-taking poets ever.... Here is one of those classic works, like Frank O'Connor's The Lonely Voice or Sean O'Faolain's The Short Story, in which a gifted writer takes us deep into the heart of the creative process."--Tom Paulin, from the Foreword "An important contribution to Lawrence studies: it enriches our understanding of particular poems by Lawrence, but more ambitiously it forces us to rethink the way in which we 'read' Lawrence's poetry more generally. I cannot overemphasise the fact that I see Chaudhuri's work to be a genuinely original and impressive contribution to the field, both adding to and transforming Lawrence studies."--Anne Fernihough, Girton College, Cambridge "A very readable, stylish, and utterly unique study.... The book brings together with extraordinary flair the most unlikely triad of Lawrence, Derrida, and Chaudhuri."--Peter D. McDonald, St Hugh's College, Oxford