National and Racial Aesthetics

Abstract

This chapter examines the travels of D. H. Lawrence, particularly to Italy and Mexico, alongside his interest in ‘Primitivism’ and the idea of a ‘Spirit of Place’. The discussion considers Lawrence’s perceptions of national and racial variances resting on a set of attributes he describes as playing a formative role in a people’s (whether nation or race) distinctive cultural artefacts and aesthetic expression. The chapter argues that, largely in vain, Lawrence spent his mature life trying to connect with a persisting spirit of place linking a Paradisal culture to the artistic practices of people alive in the twentieth century, allowing a contemporary connection with a radical aesthetic he felt had vanished in his industrialised and over-civilised homeland.