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D.H. Lawrence's Final Fictions: A Lacanian Perspective explores how literature thinks; more specifically, how the reading of fiction influences behavior. Lawrence writes passionately about our alienation from ourselves, from other people, and from the cosmos. He believes that we need to heed the voices of our unconscious, and he shows us how to meld body and mind so that, psychoanalytically speaking, Id and Ego can come together. In this endeavor there is a salient convergence between Lawrence's writings and those of Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst.
In this book, Stoltzfus examines the poetics of seven major fictions that Lawrence wrote between 1925 and 1930, five productive years that are referred to as his fabulation period. In each of the book's seven chapters, in tandem with Lacan's writings, Stoltzfus analyzes seven major characters, four of whom move from alienation to the renewal of self and the cosmos. He argues that Lawrence's fiction is simultaneously descriptive and prescriptive by showing us how to circumvent dysfunction. Stoltzfus brings literature and psychoanalysis together in readings that are both aesthetic and epistemological. They are recipes for curing the Anthropocene.
List of contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Additional Parenthetical References
Introduction: A Prelude: Cultural Dysfunction
Chapter One: "Sun:" Writing the Iceberg with Lawrence and Hemingway
Chapter Two: The Woman Who Rode Away: Madness and Cosmic Sanity
Chapter Three: "None of That:" Lawrence and Hemingway at the Bullfights with Ethel and Brett
Chapter Four: "The Rocking-Horse Winner:" Pleasing the Mother
Chapter Five: "The Man Who Loved Islands:" A Return to the Womb
Chapter Six: "Glad Ghosts:" The Cure-Cutting Through the Tangle
Chapter Seven: The Escaped Cock: Salvation
Conclusion
References
About the Author
Index
About the author
Ben Stoltzfus is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. He is a novelist, translator, literary critic, and internationally recognized inter-arts scholar. He has published twelve monographs of literary criticism and received many awards: Fulbright, Camargo, Gradiva, Humanities, Creative Arts, and MLA. He has published five novels and two collections of short stories. Romoland, a pictonovel written in collaboration with artist Judith Palmer, was also published by 39 West Press in 2017. Stoltzfus's most recent collection, Falling and Other Stories, was published by Anaphora Press in 2018. He lives in Riverside, California with Judith Palmer, his wife.
Summary
D.H. Lawrence’s Final Fictions: A Lacanian Perspective shows how Lawrence and Lacan can change beliefs and practices, oppose the Anthropocene, and restore cosmic balance. Stoltzfus brings literature and psychoanalysis together in readings that are both aesthetic and epistemological.
