D. H. Lawrence’s Etruscan Seduction

AbstractSketches of Etruscan Placesis especially important among D. H. Lawrence’s later works not only because it is the work that completes the image of a restless, indefatigable traveler looking for a new gospel in old cultures and in faraway countries, but also because it offers stimulating and surprisingly modern reflections on the relationship between dominant and subordinate cultures.For centuries historians, archaeologists, linguists and scholars had tried to penetrate the mystery of the Etruscans in order to explain their origin, interpret their symbols and read their language. Lawrence attempted to give his own interpretation of that ancient mysterious world as he viewed the Etruscans as the symbol of a lost vitality. His interpretation of this lost civilization insists on the “manipulation of cultural heritage,” which anticipates ideas expressed by Ronald Barthes inMythologies(1957). As a result, Lawrence undermines traditional views of Etruscan civilization as vassal to Greek and Roman civilization and defends its individuality. Finally, Lawrence anticipates post-colonial ideas by deconstructing the centrality of the Western historical and cultural system of values and reconstructing, although partially, the non-canonical multiplicity of ethnic separateness.