School of English
Academic & Teaching staff
Dr Fiona Becket
Senior Lecturer in English Literature (Modern and Contemporary)
+44(0) 113 343 4736
I have worked primarily in the area of literary modernism with particular reference to D. H. Lawrence, language and modernist poetics. My book D. H. Lawrence: The Thinker as Poet (1997) is a study of metaphor as a mode of understanding in Lawrence which concentrates on the fiction and discursive writing, especially his two books on the unconscious. It is a study which is informed by Heidegger's thought on language. Since then I have had other opportunities to write on Lawrence and language, psychoanalysis, environmental philosophy, the reception of Lawrence's work in Poland and the trial of Penguin Books on the publication in 1960 of the British edition of the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley's Lover. I have recently completed a project on Lawrence's poetry and his last book, Apocalypse, in the context of green thinking. I have examined the life, work and critical contexts informing Lawrence studies in The Complete Critical Guide to D. H. Lawrence (2002). More recently I have written on contemporary poetry, with a special interest in British and Irish poetry.
My interests in environmental philosophy are represented in my most recent work on Lawrence, and also in a book with an interdisciplinary focus edited with Terry Gifford (Culture, Creativity and Environment: New Environmentalist Criticism, 2007). My current research is in the area of green cultural critique and the environmental humanities and I am interested in supervising doctoral work in this area.
I currently supervise research students working on a range of topics which include contemporary British poetry, ecopoetics and D H Lawrence, culture and politics. Former supervisees have worked on topics which include James Joyce, Rushdie, Djuna Barnes and George Orwell. I welcome research proposals from potential students in any area of D. H. Lawrence studies; eco-criticism and green cultural critique; twentieth-century Irish writing; twentieth-century British and Irish literature by women.
Recent Activities
I have recently given papers on Lawrence, child psychology and psychoanalysis. I will be giving a paper in July 2012 on Lawrence and ecopoetics at the University of Nottingham conference 'D H Lawrence: Regional, national and International'. I am planning an exhibition of visual and concrete poetry at the University of Leeds (2012).
I am a regular contributor to the annual International D. H. Lawrence Symposia at the University of Paris X, organised by Professor Ginette Roy and Dr Stephen Rowley.
I am on the editorial board for Journal of D H Lawrence Studies, and I have an editorial role on Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings.
I am a member of ASLE UK (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment).
Teaching
Undergraduate
Modern Literature
Reading Ireland: Contemporary Irish Writing
Contemporary Literature
D. H. Lawrence: Reactionary or Radical
Postgraduate
Modern to Contemporary (MA core module)
A Modernist at the Margins: D. H. Lawrence
I contribute to the MA programme Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature