In der Literaturkritik gilt D.H. Lawrence als ebenso bedeutender wie streitbarer Autor von Romanklassikern wie Lady Chatterley's Lover, Women in Love oder The Rainbow. Durch das Aufkommen der gender studies existiert zudem eine nur schwer überschaubare Anzahl von Studien, die der Rolle der Sexualität sowie der Geschlechterkonzeption im Romanwerk von Lawrence gewidmet sind. Doch so klar die Literaturkritik diese Problematik erfaßt hat, so klar hat sie im Vergleich dazu - wenn auch mit Ausnahmen - Lawrences nicht nur zahlenmäßig großes lyrisches Werk ignoriert. Diese relative Vernachlässigung durch die Forschung ist um so erstaunlicher, als sich in Lawrences Lyrik viele Grundthesen, die er in seinen Romanen auf Hunderten von Seiten durchspielt, oft in extrem konziser Form finden. Wichtige Teile seiner 'Geschlechter-Philosophie' werden durch die Lyrik sogar antizipiert.

Central to animal studies is the question of words and how they are used in relation to wordless beings such as non-human animals. This issue is addressed by the writer D.H. Lawrence, and the focus of this thesis is the linguistic vulnerability of humans and non-humans in his novel Women in Love, a subject that will be explored with the help of the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s text The Animal That Therefore I Am. The argument is that Women in Love illustrates the human subjection to and constitution in language, which both enables human thinking and restricts the human ability to think without words. This linguistic vulnerability causes a similar vulnerability in non-human animals in two ways. First, humans tend to imagine others, including non-verbal animals, through words, a medium they exist outside of and therefore cannot be defined through. Second, humans are often unperceptive of non-linguistic means of expression and they therefore do not discern what non-human animals may be trying to communicate to them, which often enables humans to justify abuse against non-humans. In addition, the novel shows how this shared but unequal vulnerability can sometimes be dissolved through the likewise shared but equal physical vulnerability of all animals if a human is able to imagine the experiences of a non-human animal through their shared embodiment rather than through human language. Hence the essay shows the importance of recognizing the limitations of language and of being aware of how the symbolizing effect of words influences the human treatment of its others.

Katherine Mansfield among the Moderns examines Katherine Mansfield’s relationship with three fellow writers: Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, and Aldous Huxley, and appraises her impact on their writing. Drawing on the literary and the personal relationships between the aforementioned, and on letters, diaries, and journals, this project traces Mansfield’s interactions with her contemporaries, providing a richer and more dynamic portrait of Mansfield’s place within modernism than usually recognized. Hitherto, critical work has not scrutinized Mansfield in the manner I suggest: attending to representations of her as a character in other’s work, while analyzing the degree to which her influence on the aforementioned authors affected their writing and success. Albeit, her influence extends in vastly different ways, and is affected by gender and nationality. While Woolf’s early foray into Modernism is accelerated by Mansfield’s criticism of her work, several of Woolf’s texts – “Kew Gardens,” Jacob’s Room, and Mrs. Dalloway – are similar in certain respects to Mansfield’s work – “Bliss” and “The Garden Party.” A repudiation of Mansfield, personally, and a retelling of her work are seen in Lawrence’s The Lost Girl and Women in Love. Huxley’s Those Barren Leaves and Point Counter Point, contain characterizations of Mansfield that undermine her writing, and her person: both are affected by the mythical misrepresentation of Mansfield, created by Murry after her death, known as the “Cult of Mansfield.” Using Life Writing, this study asserts that Mansfield had impact on the writing of Woolf, Lawrence, and Huxley. Taking into account the many issues that surround the recognition of this, among them: gender politics, colonialism, marginality by genre, and personal relations – these all, to varying degrees, prevented critics from acknowledging that a minor modernist author played a role in the undisputed success of three major authors of the twentieth century.

El país enemigo: México en la obra de Roberto Bolaño, 1980-2004 propone, en un primer momento, un análisis del papel central que juega México en la obra del autor chileno, Roberto Bolaño. La exploración de la obsesiva representación literaria del país hispanoamericano, su paisaje y sus habitantes en la narrativa de Bolaño revela una visión profundamente pesimista, distópica y con rasgos escatológico-apocalípticos, según la cual México es primordialmente o el espacio nostálgico de la juventud perdida o el territorio de la muerte, del crimen y del Mal. En un segundo momento, se argumenta que tales elecciones narrativas vinculan a Roberto Bolaño con una larga tradición discursiva de representación literaria de la realidad mexicana que se actualiza en la novela anglosajona del siglo XX, particularmente en la obra de tema mexicano de D.H. Lawrence. El estudio de ese vínculo permite afirmar que Roberto Bolaño no rebasa críticamente tal tradición discursiva; sino que la repite y reafirma, con consecuencias éticas y artísticas cuestionables. / The Enemy Country: Mexico in Roberto Bolaño´s Work, 1980-2004 analyzes, firstly, the key role of Mexico in the work of the Chilean author, Roberto Bolaño. The study of the obsessive representation of the Hispano-American country, its landscape, and people in Bolaño´s literature reveals a pessimistic, dystopian and apocalyptical vision, in which Mexico becomes the nostalgic place of the lost youth or the territory of death, crime and Evil. Secondly, it is argued that such narrative choices link Bolaño´s work with an old discourse of literary representation of Mexico that the 20th English and American novel, particularly D.H. Lawrence´s Mexican work, exemplify and confirms. The consideration of this link ascertains the fact that Roberto Bolaño does not critically renew or surmount that old discourse of representation; rather he repeats and affirms it, not without ethical and artistic consequences.

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Despite his own conservative values, D.H. Lawrence writes sexually liberated female characters. The most subversive female characters in Lawrence’s oeuvre are the Brangwens of The Rainbow. The Brangwens are prototypical models of a form of femininity that connects women to Nature while distancing them from society; his women are cast as monsters, but are strengthened from their link with Nature. They represent what I am calling the Lawrentian-Woman. The Lawrentian-Woman has proven influential for contemporary British authors. I examine the Lawrentian-Woman’s adoption by later writers and her evolution from modernist frame to postmodern appropriation. First, I look at the Brangwens. They establish the tropes of the Lawrentian-Woman and provide the base from which to compare the model’s subsequent mutations. Next, I examine modern British writers and their appropriation of the Lawrentian-Woman. The Lawrentian-Woman’s attributes remain intact, but are deconstructed in ways that explore women’s continued liminality in patriarchal society.