D.H. Lawrence's Etruscan Seduction

Abstract: Sketches of Etruscan Places is 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 penetratethe mysteryof theEtruscans inorder toexplain their origin,interpret their symbols and read their language. Lawrence attempted to give his own interpretationof thatancient mysterious worldas heviewed theEtruscans asthe symbol of a lost vitality. His interpretation of this lost civilization insists on the “manipulation of cultural heritage,” which anticipates ideas expressed by Ronald BarthesinMythologies(1957).Asaresult,Lawrenceunderminestraditionalviews of Etruscan civilization as vassal to Greek and Roman civilization and defends its individuality. Finally,Lawrenceanticipatespost-colonialideasbydeconstructing the centrality of the Western historical and cultural system of values and reconstructing, although partially, the non-canonical multiplicity of ethnic separateness.