Promptings of Desire: Creativity and the Religious Impulse in the Works of D. H. Lawrence

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Through his art, D.H. Lawrence exhorted people to recognise their potential for creative change and to energise it toward a more fulfilling mode of existence. Poplawski seeks to define Lawrence's concept of creativity and explores its use as a central structuring principle of his ethical, metaphysical and aesthetic thought. Viewed in relation to his basic religious beliefs, the concept of creativity provides us with an integrated perspective on his art. Poplawski considers biographical elements of Lawrence's religious formation and traces the path of transmittal of these ideas into the early fiction - particularly "The Rainbow". He then continues to demonstrate how religious views and aesthetic theory coalesce in the later works. He also engages critical dialogue by investigating counter-creative trends of elitism and sexism in the corpus.

Reviews

Demonstrating prodigious knowledge not only of Lawrence's works, but also of those of his critics and of various relevant theoreticians, Poplawski does not claim to be either comprehensive or original. Rather, he wishes to explore, for the first time in depth, a commonly acknowledged major theme in Lawrence-creativity, arguing that it is "a central structuring principle of his aesthetic, ethical, and metaphysical thought." Throughout, Poplawski focuses on ideas, using various Lawrence works to illustrate them. After examining the history of various meanings of creativity (Chapter 1) and relating them to Lawrence's notions the "creative unconscious" (Chapter 2), he provides an overview of the novels, pointing to limitations in the first three novels, arguing that in The Rainbow and Women in Love Lawrence provides the greatest scope and detail in his treatment of creativity, and asserting that the remaining novels focus much more narrowly on individual aspects of it. Most of the remaining chapters examine this position. First, however, Poplawski demonstrates the inseparability of Lawrence's concept of creativity and his religious views, and in a later chapter he explores, in some depth, numerous contradictions in Lawrence's thinking. This is a valubale study-knowledgeable. thoughtful, licid and balanced. Advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty.-Choice
While most people would argue that creativity is a good thing and that 'creativity in literature' is a topic germane to a discussion of Lawrence's work, there have been few attempts to examine precisely what is meant by these terms. Paul Poplawski's well-structured and copiously annotated study fills the gap, and in it he has signally achieved his aim of both 'clarifying and problematising' what is meant by 'creativity.'-Journal of the D.H. Lawrence Society
"While most people would argue that creativity is a good thing and that 'creativity in literature' is a topic germane to a discussion of Lawrence's work, there have been few attempts to examine precisely what is meant by these terms. Paul Poplawski's well-structured and copiously annotated study fills the gap, and in it he has signally achieved his aim of both 'clarifying and problematising' what is meant by 'creativity.'"-Journal of the D.H. Lawrence Society
"Demonstrating prodigious knowledge not only of Lawrence's works, but also of those of his critics and of various relevant theoreticians, Poplawski does not claim to be either comprehensive or original. Rather, he wishes to explore, for the first time in depth, a commonly acknowledged major theme in Lawrence-creativity, arguing that it is "a central structuring principle of his aesthetic, ethical, and metaphysical thought." Throughout, Poplawski focuses on ideas, using various Lawrence works to illustrate them. After examining the history of various meanings of creativity (Chapter 1) and relating them to Lawrence's notions the "creative unconscious" (Chapter 2), he provides an overview of the novels, pointing to limitations in the first three novels, arguing that in The Rainbow and Women in Love Lawrence provides the greatest scope and detail in his treatment of creativity, and asserting that the remaining novels focus much more narrowly on individual aspects of it. Most of the remaining chapters examine this position. First, however, Poplawski demonstrates the inseparability of Lawrence's concept of creativity and his religious views, and in a later chapter he explores, in some depth, numerous contradictions in Lawrence's thinking. This is a valubale study-knowledgeable. thoughtful, licid and balanced. Advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty."-Choice

Author Bio

PAUL POPLAWSKI is Director of Studies at Vaughan College, University of Leicester. He has taught widely in 19th and 20th century literature and specializes in D. H. Lawrence, Modernism, and Jane Austen. He recently published a revised 3rd edition of Warren Robets' A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence (2001). He is also the author of D. H. Lawrence: A Reference Companion (Greenwood, 1996), and A Jane Austen Encyclopedia (Greenwood, 1998), and editor of Writing the Body in D. H. Lawrence (Greenwood, 2001).