D. H. Lawrence: Icon

Abstract

This chapter takes a double portrait by Dorothy Brett of D. H. Lawrence as Christ and Pan as the starting point for an analysis of how Lawrence has been apprehended – both positively and negatively – as resembling Christ and/or Pan, or else for failing to resemble one of them sufficiently, from his own lifetime until the 1960s. Brett’s portraiture of Lawrence also initiates a study of the painted and photographic iconography of Lawrence made chiefly but not exclusively within his own lifetime, with a focus on the extent to which these suggest a Christ-like or a Pan-like aspect. A concluding section observes that both deifying and iconoclastic responses to Lawrence are now less common, and that more secular, but still passionately-appreciative, responses to him have largely replaced them.