The Laurentian idiom in American literary and cultural studies

This dissertation explores the relation between D. H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) and American literary and cultural studies until the appearance of Richard Slotkin's Regeneration Through Violence (1973). These years are marked by a clash of various critical ideologies vying for supremacy in the interpretation of American literature and culture. Among these critics, D. H. Lawrence's is the only voice not committed to an established school of criticism. However, despite the highly unconventional nature of his essays, he creates a lasting impression on the criticism of this period. This study examines the intuitions and insights controlling his critical idiom, and also the factors responsible for American critics incorporating, not only his ideas, but even his methods in their writings.;This work consists of an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction underlines the special relation in which D. H. Lawrence stands with America--its literature and culture. Chapter one starts with a survey of the critical preoccupations of the first two decades of the twentieth century. It discusses D. H. Lawrence's work against the background of the challenges hinted at by these critics and addressed by D. H. Lawrence himself, and concludes with an analysis of Lawrence's own critical method. The second chapter documents and accounts for the intrusion D. H. Lawrence's pronouncements made in the critical writings on American Renaissance literature and culture. The third chapter examines some key American literary and cultural texts, and their affinity to the Laurentian critical idiom. The conclusion sums up the relevance of D. H. Lawrence's ideas on narrative, history, and culture, by placing in the context of explorations being carried out in these areas at present.