- Department
- Department of English
- Email Address
- pbalbert@trinity.edu
Dr. Peter Balbert is a widely published scholar and Professor Emeritus of English after thirty-eight distinguished teaching years at Trinity. The author of four significant books and more than fifty articles in major journals and anthologies, he taught for many decades the twentieth century survey of American literature as well as seminars in the British and American novel.
His research methodology integrates Freudian theory, psychobiography, and intertexuality with major interests in the work of D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, and Norman Mailer. The author of four books and more than forty articles, he has served as a panelist for Challenge Grants at the National Endowment for the Humanities, as editorial adviser of Academic Leader, as consultant to the American Institutes of Research, and as associate editor of Planning for Higher Education.
Areas of Expertise
- Modern and contemporary literature
- Psychobiography
- Freudian theory
- Close textual reading
- Modernism
Professional Achievements and Contributions
- Chair of English Department for sixteen years
- Panelist for Challenge Grants at the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Invited International Presentations at Paris, London, Sydney, Gargano, Ottawa et. al.
- Associate Editor of Planning for Higher Education
- Planned, Hosted, and Introduced multi-day visits to Trinity of such iconic writers as Norman Mailer, John Updike, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Donald Hall, William Styron, Jane Smiley, Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut, Jamaica Kincaid, Margaret Atwood, and Louise Erdrich, et. al.
Education
- Ph.D., Cornell University
- M.A., Cornell University
- B.A., University of Michigan
Selected Publications
Books
This innovative study of eight major works of fiction by D. H. Lawrence examines the dominant presence of what is here termed a "marriage matrix." It reveals how this intense pattern of preoccupation not only structures the symbology and plot development of these powerful stories, but also consistently engages with such important subjects in Lawrence's life as depression, illness, friendship, renewal, transcendence, and impotence. As a compelling interpretation of Lawrence's craft and a provocative foray into the intimations of psychobiography, the book's notions of "synergistic criticism" integrate various approaches to this modernist writer to reveal provocative linkages between his visionary art and turbulent career and marriage. The volume contains well-grounded speculations on the sexual life of Lawrence and Frieda, on the oedipal residue of Lawrence's relation to his parents, on the complex friendships with Cynthia Asquith, J. Middleton Murry, and Katherine Mansfield, and on the theories of James Frazer, Sigmund and Anna Freud, James W. Pryse, Peter Ouspensky, and Norman Mailer. The Marriage Matrix also reproduces six paintings by Lawrence and one by Georgia O'Keeffe within pertinent discussions of Lawrence's practice and theory of visual art and how they further enhance the priorities of his fiction. To further contextualize the book's eclectic approach to impinging issues about the current province of research, teaching, and literature, the texts of two of the author's controversial presentations to the academy are also included, as well as relevant correspondence with the late writer, Norman Mailer, on the subject of Lawrence's genius and influence.
- D. H. Lawrence and the Marriage Matrix: Intertextual Adventures in Conflict, Renewal, and Transcendence. (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016)
- D. H. Lawrence and the Phallic Imagination: Essays on Sexual Identity and Feminist Misreading. (New York and London, St. Martin's and Macmillan, 1989)
- D. H. Lawrence: A Centenary Consideration, a collection of primarily original essays, which I coedited with Phillip Marcus. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).
- D. H. Lawrence and the Psychology of Rhythm (The Hague: Mouton, 1974).
Essays
- "Compensatory Reversal and the Voluptuous Suffocation: Nightmare and Sexual Revenge in 'The Border-Line,'" in The Mailer Review 11 (2017), 227-248. Published 2019
- “Impotence, Recovery, and the Honorable Beast: The Aesthetics of the Fourth Dimension in The Virgin and the Gipsy,” in The Mailer Review, 10 (2016), 370-409.
- “From Lady Chatterley’s Lover to The Deer Park: Marriage, Instinctual Primacy, and the Dialectic of Erotic Risk,” in The Mailer Review 9 (2015), 251-283.
- "The Dark Secret and the Coccygeal Continuum, 1918-1920: From Oedipus to Debasement to Renewal in The Last Girl," in D.H. Lawrence Studies 23 (2015), 101-139.
Subjects Taught
- 20th Century American Literature
- The Modern Novel
- First Year Experience: Creative Genius
- Various Seminars on D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and John Updike
Community Service & Involvement
Professor Balbert is a member of the National Association of Scholars and has participated in workshops for the Society of College and University Planning. His administrative scholarship has been used for workshop discussion by the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences.
Balbert works with peer tutors in First Year Experience: Creative Genius and is a long-standing member of the Council on Teacher Education.