ABSTRACT

I will not dwell on the works of D.H. Lawrence, the fourth man in the mythicizing quartet o f twentieth-century letters. Lawrence got most of his ideas on myth and ritual from Frazer’s The Golden Bough and partly from Crawley’s The Mystic Rose.111 In particular, he drew on these works for his ideas on hierogamy, fertility goddesses, and the scapegoat as ritual sacrifice, as well as the image of the mysterious stranger endowed with magical powers. Following Frazer, Lawrence makes mention in his writing of numerous Greek and Near-Eastern di­ vinities: Dionysus, Adonis, Artemis, Cybele, Astarte, Isis, Persephone, and Baal, among others. He was also influenced by Nietzsche and psy­ choanalysis. His fascination with myth is no doubt a reaction to the middle class prose of modem civilization that he hated so much.