Approaches to Teaching the Works of D. H. Lawrence ed. by M. Elizabeth Sargent and Garry Watson

Investigating Wilderness Tips, Goldman cleverly demonstrates how Atwood invites readers “to look in the mirror, reflect on our own greedy behaviour—the legacy of imperialism at the heart of our disaster narra­ tives—and acknowledge the face of the white cannibal” (181). Concluding the collection is Geoffrey Sanborn’s survey and critique of recent publications dealing with cannibalism, comprising a wise choice for a final essay, since it self-reflexively questions cannibalistic critique at the same time that it provides a thoughtful conclusion to the collection. Guest’s text is remarkably even in its consistency, offering provoca­ tive readings of cannibalism that span the field of literary studies. I highly recommend Eating Their Words, for it is a fine work of scholarship that compares well with other texts in the area, such as Barker, Hulme, and Iversen’s Cannibalism and the Colonial World, and Creed and Hoorn’s Body Trade. In short, Guest’s excellent collection is a must read for anyone even remotely interested in this topic. Priscilla L. Walton Carleton University M . Elizabeth Sargent and Garry Watson, eds. Approaches to Teaching the W orks o/D. H. Lawrence. N ew York: M L A , 200E Pp. 270 + xviii. Paper u.s. $50.60. The series of which this collection of essays and brief teaching-strategy sug­ gestions forms part now numbers in excess of seventy volumes, evidence of a lively contemporary market for various kinds of pedagogical handbook. The motivations of the m l a Publications Committee that sponsors the series are not only to “improve the craft—as well as the art—of teaching but also encourage serious and continuing discussion of the aims and methods of teaching literature.” A review is perhaps not the best place to engage the perennially provocative question of how or whether good teaching can be taught. But it does provide the opportunity to express overtly the reservations that so many teachers, including a lot of outstanding ones, articulate more cautiously in corridor grumbles. We now function in a college and university milieu in which institu­ tional pressure to acknowledge the importance of teaching—never in any serious doubt amongst those enthusiastic about doing it, but seemingly discovered relatively recently by senior university administrators—often 258 I Wilson runs foul of the difficulty of assessing what it actually comprises. A whole industry for the promulgation of ways of announcing one’s commitment to the cause has been created over the last few years. Centres for University Teaching are allotted generous budgets, even in supposedly straitened eco­ nomic times, and have therefore found increasingly creative ways in which to use them up. Teaching portfolios bulge with ever more glossy materials, prepared for delivery via more and more technologically sophisticated means on expensive but incipiently obsolete computers, bought with public funds from private industries anxious to demonstrate their selfless commitment to the life of the mind by forming lucrative partnerships with educational institutions. Disaffected student “clients,” of whatever ability or degree of informed involvement with their studies, distribute world-wide over the internet brusque judgements on their teachers in defamatory phrases that would result in the severe disciplining of any teacher who elected to reciprocate in kind. Declarations of “teaching philosophy” are now routinely required from applicants for tenure-stream jobs, unkindly forcing them to state the obvious in touching but repetitive outpourings of pedagogical earnestness. This is a particularly eccentric way for uni­ versity administrations to attempt to achieve collective instructional nir­ vana, since such protestations can serve a genuine discriminatory purpose only if it is assumed that other, less-enlightened, aspirants to professional security are naively plumping out their application letters with passionate revelations of their commitment to a dismissively authoritarian lecturing style, a comatose teaching environment, and the inculcation of a life-long distaste for imaginative literature. Against this climate of confused ends, means and vested interests, this book delivers a reasonable part ofwhat it promises in the way of thoughtful engagement with productive methods of introducing Lawrence to stu­ dents. Divided into sixteen essays and seventeen shorter “course-context sketches,” with a preliminary section that provides a thorough summary of the critical, textual, biographical, archival and electronic context and resources...

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