Études Britanniques Contemporaines (Nov 2009)
From Babel to Eden: D. H. Lawrence's Quest Abroad
Abstract
Having sustained the strain of censorship and the shoc of conscription examinations during the war, D. H. Lawrence left his native country with his wife in 1919 in search of new forms of relationships between men through cosmic rebirth. As a consequence, in his novels, Aaron’s Rod, Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent, set respectively in Italy, Australia and Mexico, Lawrence introduces characters who, mirroring his own despair, reject Britain, or “the Babel” as he calls his homeland and what it stands for in the world.In this article, I would like to explore how the physical, emotional and also ideological distancing from Britain is narrated through the very descriptions of foreign lands and cultures. Indeed, even if the characters are miles away from Britain, they still bear with them their cultural background, so it is through the prism of their Englishness that they discover the native inhabitants, politics, religion, architecture, birds and plants of the countries they are visiting.As the narratives unfold, it soon becomes blatant that severing the umbilical cord with the abhorred “Babel” implies building a new relation to language, the Word. Concomitantly, the first feeling of estrangement gives way to creativity in what becomes a new Eden. Language itself seems to undergo rebirth as Lawrence piles up negatives, comparisons and intertextual references namely with the Bible. Defining what the new relation to language consists in for this modern author will reveal his vision of a cosmic ideal.
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