D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference'
Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present
Amit Chaudhuri
Foreword by Tom Paulin
Reviews and Awards
"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