Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 Leaves of Letters – Walt Whitman
- 2 The Dream of a Ridiculous Writer – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 3 Through the Jabber – Lewis Carroll
- 4 The Drunken Inkwell – Arthur Rimbaud
- 5 In Search of Lost Allusion – Marcel Proust
- 6 Writers and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
6 - Writers and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 Leaves of Letters – Walt Whitman
- 2 The Dream of a Ridiculous Writer – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 3 Through the Jabber – Lewis Carroll
- 4 The Drunken Inkwell – Arthur Rimbaud
- 5 In Search of Lost Allusion – Marcel Proust
- 6 Writers and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Yes, Lawrence like other men of genius had his Chaplinesque moments – especially when he was surrounded by the women … Lawrence the artist almost succeeded in becoming God. Lawrence the man gets plates smashed over his head by an irate spouse. (And he deserved it, too, from all accounts.) Lawrence the philosopher talks almost as well as Socrates, better sometimes, in my humble opinion.
– Henry Miller, ‘Shadowy Monomania’, Sunday after the War (1944)Apart from the potential lines of intertextuality and influence that exist between Lawrence and Miller, the two writers share a very significant and outright connection in terms of the publication of their work. Lawrence's last novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Miller's Tropic of Cancer were two of the three very high-profile books that were part of a breakthrough in 1959 on an obscenity ban on literature in the United Kingdom and the United States. (John Cleland's 1748 novel Fanny Hill is the third.) Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was first published in Italy in 1928 but was banned in its native England until 1960, by which time Lawrence had been deceased for nearly twenty years. Nevertheless, this breakthrough in the ruling on obscenity caused Lawrence and Miller to become emblems for the great sexual revolution of the mid-twentieth century, perhaps despite their own literary intentions. This ruling ultimately fuelled a massive wave of causes in the name of freedom of speech, literary expression and sexual liberation, bombarding media outlets throughout the 1960s and decidedly redefining the boundaries of sexuality in popular and public culture. Nevertheless, Miller’s affinities with Lawrence run far deeper than their mutual and unanticipated influence on groups such as the Beats and on counter-culture in general.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Henry Miller and How he Got That Way , pp. 156 - 178Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011