Barry J. Scherr

D. H. Lawrence Today is a rare and extraordinary blend of intellectual-political history, psycho-literary biography, and literary criticism not seen in Lawrence studies since the heyday of F. R. Leavis. Barry J. Scherr provides a vigorous defense of Lawrence against his powerful enemies in the literary-cultural-political-academic world - a world dominated today by the political correctness of the elite extreme left-wing intelligentsia. Dr. Scherr employs a daring, original, intense strategy to deal with Lawrence's enemies, involving unique, intricate, complex explication de texte as well as incisive polemic. Unconventional and seminal, D. H. Lawrence Today is the most stimulating, provocative, courageous book on Lawrence to appear in many years.

This book is the first to examine the influence of Shakespeare—particularly Hamlet—on D. H. Lawrence. Using the Bloomian theory of the "anxiety of influence" to probe the startling depths of Lawrence's agon with his towering precursor Shakespeare, it closely examines Lawrence's crypto-Jewish identity, as well as that of many of his highly individual characters, who embody the characteristics of Old Testament figures, and in so doing infuse a patriarchal strength and divine "religious" sublimity into civilized life. Lawrence's claims about the self-sacrificing influence of Christianity on Shakespeare's Hamlet, on the other hand, demonstrate how this influence carries over into the submission of the subject and the decline of Western Civilization. The book extrapolates this decline into a critique of the modern-day left-wing ideology that appropriates the self-abnegating individual to its collectivist ends.In responding agonistically to Shakespeare's Hamlet, Lawrence claims a far more complete, vital, and salubrious "consciousness" and a Weltanschauung that makes for greater, more fulfilling "life" thanks to the inner strength, psychic and sexual power of the Lawrentian "Self Supreme."The book will appeal to Lawrence and Shakespeare scholars and enthusiasts who wish to appreciate Lawrence and Shakespeare as supremely profound writers and thinkers. Its unique demonstration of Bloomian literary theory makes it come poignantly alive for both graduate students and college professors.

Love and Death in Lawrence and Foucault is the first full-length study of Foucault and the Foucaultians not to look at them from a quasi-hagiographical perspective. The Lawrentian point of view employed here to deal with Foucault and his oeuvre is utterly unique, imaginative, and efficacious in explicating/demystifying Foucaultian theory, while at the same time promoting Barry J. Scherr’s courageous, indefatigable project of «restoring» D. H. Lawrence to his rightfully and supremely high place in the pantheon of great British literature. Rebellious and unconventional yet scholarly and mature, Love and Death in Lawrence and Foucault is the bravest and most unorthodox study of Foucault to date. It is a worthy addition to Scherr’s previous literary-cultural studies, D. H. Lawrence Today and D. H. Lawrence’s Response to Plato. A supremely lively, incisive, lucid, and profound critique, Love and Death in Lawrence and Foucault is indispensable to students and scholars of Lawrence and Foucault alike.

"D.H. Lawrence's Response to Plato: A Bloomian Interpretation" is a complex, unique, intellectually stimulating application of Harold Bloom's -anxiety of influence- theories to the art and thought of D.H. Lawrence. In this brilliant pioneering study Barry J. Scherr demonstrates Lawrence's great strength as a cultural figure ranking even with the classical Plato. Furthermore, Dr. Scherr's quintessentially original readings of "Women in Love" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" provide remarkable insights and compelling analysis concerning these two Lawrence classics. Not only does this creative study present a radically new reading of Lawrence, but it also makes Bloom's theory come alive for us."