D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, and the Meaning of the Mythical Method

Abstract:

There is a discrepancy between evidence of T. S. Eliot’s respect for D. H. Lawrence and F. R. Leavis’s account of their diametrical opposition. My goal is to establish and spell out the reasons for Eliot’s ambivalent posture. On the one hand, I argue that both authors tried to reconcile the contradiction between social unity and individual freedom, and they did so by resolving it into more basic concerns with morality, impersonality, and tradition. This parallel explains Eliot’s attraction to Lawrence. On the other hand, I argue that the different way they framed and understood these concerns accounts for his antipathy and, in turn, sheds new light on the mythical method in The Waste Land. When considered alongside Lawrence’s work and Eliot’s judgment of it, the mythical method comes across as no glorification of the past but instead as a critique of the present for repeating it.