The Escaped Cock

David Herbert Lawrence

Black Sparrow Press, 1973 - Fiction - 170 pages

In his last novel, published less than a year before his death, D.H. Lawrence takes up the theme of Jesus' resurrection & his final days on earth. Lawrence recounts his agonizing journey from death back to life with alarming realism: his initial painful awakening, the utter disillusionment of living beyond his brutal death, his bewildering encounters with strangers & friends, & finally, his redemptive sexual relationship with the priestess of the pagan goddess Isis. The story expands from its Christian roots to embrace Lawrence's abiding faith in the life force apparent in every aspect of the natural world. The combination of a pure idealism with a pure physicality enriches these characters both as human beings & as symbols of beliefs too often held in opposition. The language of this book is indulgent for Lawrence--it contains the sharp focus & lyrical intensity of poetry without losing the subtlety of detail that characterizes his prose. For his final work, it seems that Lawrence has encapsulated a lifetime of extraordinary vision into one profoundly exquisite parable.

Contents

• Part I: 13
• Part II: 71
• Complete List of Lawrence Letters: 96

About the author

D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885. His father was a coal miner and Lawrence grew up in a mining town in England. He always hated the mines, however, and frequently used them in his writing to represent both darkness and industrialism, which he despised because he felt it was scarring the English countryside. Lawrence attended high school and college in Nottingham and, after graduation, became a school teacher in Croyden in 1908. Although his first two novels had been unsuccessful, he turned to writing full time when a serious illness forced him to stop teaching. Lawrence spent much of his adult life abroad in Europe, particularly Italy, where he wrote some of his most significant and most controversial novels, including Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterly's Lover. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, who had left her first husband and her children to live with him, spent several years touring Europe and also lived in New Mexico for a time. Lawrence had been a frail child, and he suffered much of his life from tuberculosis. Eventually, he retired to a sanitorium in Nice, France. He died in France in 1930, at age 44. In his relatively short life, he produced more than 50 volumes of short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel journals, and letters, in addition to the novels for which he is best known.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Escaped Cock
• Author: David Herbert Lawrence
• Editor: Gerald M. Lacy
• Contributor: Gerald M. Lacy
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, 1973
• ISBN: 0876851715, 9780876851715
• Length: 170 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Biographical