Overview

Winner of the D.H. Lawrence Society of North America’s Biennial Award for a Newly Published Scholar in Lawrence Studies   Though the differences in style and politics between Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) and D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) are many, they both had formative experiences as teachers. Between 1905 and 1907, Woolf taught history and composition courses at Morley College while Lawrence spent nearly a decade in the field of elementary education between 1902 and 1912. The Sensuous Pedagogies of Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence reframes Woolf and Lawrence’s later experiments in fiction, life-writing, and literary criticism as the works of former teachers, of writers (that is) still preoccupied with pedagogy. More specifically, the book argues that across their respective writing careers they conceptualize problems of teaching and learning as problems of sensation, emotion, or intensity. But the “sensuous pedagogies” Woolf and Lawrence depict and enact are not limited to classroom spaces or strategies; rather, they pertain to non-institutional relationships, developmental narratives, spaces, and needs. Friendships and other intimate relationships in Lawrence’s fiction, for instance, often take on a pedagogical shape or texture (one person playing the student; the other, the teacher) while Woolf’s literary criticism models a novel approach to taste-training that prioritizes the individual freedom of common readers (who must learn to attend to books that give them pleasure). In addition, Sensuous Pedagogies reads Lawrence’s literary criticism as reparative, Woolf’s fiction as sustained feminist pedagogy, and their respective theories of life and love as fundamentally entangled with pedagogical concerns.

Full Product Details

9781835538777

Table of Contents

Reviews

Reviews'Carefully researched and beautifully written... The risks Hagen takes—by pairing two writers whose pedagogy strikes one at first as unreconcilable and by addressing his readers directly with unapologetic questions about our own investments in the texts we read and teach—ultimately pay off and produce a refreshingly sensitive reading of each author’s openness to their readers’ active engagement with the scenarios or spaces made possible by their prose.' Madelyn Detloff, Woolf Studies Annual 'Hagen supports his theoretical approach to Woolf and Lawrence through detailed close reading... Hagen’s idea of ‘sensuous pedagogy’ can now be added to a vocabulary that challenges misconceptions of modernism and its ideas as elitist.' Michael Black, The Modernist Review 'Sensuous Pedagogies obliges us to think afresh about the kinds of personal investment and motivation we bring to bear on our literary criticism... [the book's value] both as a superb stimulus to teaching Lawrence and Woolf, and as a critical study in its own right, is unquestionable.' Jeff Wallace, Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies ‘Hagen is a sensitive reader and... provides a careful analysis of passages that illustrate moments of what he terms “affective effect,” moments that influence readers, texts, and characters to create new ways of being.’ Judith Ruderman, D. H. Lawrence Review 'Sensuous Pedagogies positions itself as a reparative study, in that Woolf and Lawrence are seldom read together and usually not for their pedagogic approaches to questions of modern living... Through Woolf, Hagen makes a strong case for what we intuitively know - that our relationships with literary texts are intimate pedagogic encounters... Hagen's analyses of Lawrence are refreshing and revivify Lawrence studies.' Ria Banerjee, CUNY Guttman Community College

‘Carefully researched and beautifully written... The risks Hagen takes—by pairing two writers whose pedagogy strikes one at first as unreconcilable and by addressing his readers directly with unapologetic questions about our own investments in the texts we read and teach—ultimately pay off and produce a refreshingly sensitive reading of each author’s openness to their readers’ active engagement with the scenarios or spaces made possible by their prose.’ Madelyn Detloff, Woolf Studies Annual ‘Hagen supports his theoretical approach to Woolf and Lawrence through detailed close reading... Hagen’s idea of ‘sensuous pedagogy’ can now be added to a vocabulary that challenges misconceptions of modernism and its ideas as elitist.’ Michael Black, The Modernist Review ‘Sensuous Pedagogies obliges us to think afresh about the kinds of personal investment and motivation we bring to bear on our literary criticism... [the book’s value] both as a superb stimulus to teaching Lawrence and Woolf, and as a critical study in its own right, is unquestionable.’ Jeff Wallace, *Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies ** ‘Hagen is a sensitive reader and... provides a careful analysis of passages that illustrate moments of what he terms “affective effect,” moments that influence readers, texts, and characters to create new ways of being.’ Judith Ruderman, D. H. Lawrence Review ‘Sensuous Pedagogies positions itself as a reparative study, in that Woolf and Lawrence are seldom read together and usually not for their pedagogic approaches to questions of modern living... Through Woolf, Hagen makes a strong case for what we intuitively know - that our relationships with literary texts are intimate pedagogic encounters... Hagen’s analyses of Lawrence are refreshing and revivify Lawrence studies.’ Ria Banerjee, Virginia Woolf Miscellany

Author Information

Benjamin D. Hagen teaches at the University of South Dakota. He is a past president of the International Virginia Woolf Society, a past organizer of the Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, the current editor of Woolf Studies Annual, and the author of The Sensuous Pedagogies of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence (Clemson University Press, 2020). His research has appeared in the journals Age, Culture, Humanities; Comparative Critical Studies; Modernism/modernity; PMLA; Twentieth-Century Literature; and Virginia Woolf Miscellany as well as in book collections focused on Virginia Woolf, the Bloomsbury Group, and Louise DeSalvo.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available