부산대학교 도서관

Lawrence`s famous idea of the spirit of place, according to which “Every person is polarised in some particular locality,” carries echoes of nineteenth-century racial science which exaggerated racial difference, sometimes to the point of arguing that difference of race was equivalent to difference of species. For this reason racial scientists deprecated miscegenation, a theme whose handling by Lawrence can be traced in the different drafts of The Plumed Serpent. It is also well known that racist sentiments can be found in Lawrence, sometimes in a surprisingly conventional form. This essay examines the various ways in which these ideas are refracted in Studies in Classic American Literature, St. Mawr and The Plumed Serpent, arguing that they are frequently destabilised, and that this destabilisation is the source of much of his most creative writing.