Lee M. Jenkins
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780813060507
- eISBN:
- 9780813050676
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813060507.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter discusses Lawrence’s American fiction, beginning with his abortive attempt to write an American novel based on the life of his hostess in New Mexico, Mabel Dodge Luhan. The chapter ...
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This chapter discusses Lawrence’s American fiction, beginning with his abortive attempt to write an American novel based on the life of his hostess in New Mexico, Mabel Dodge Luhan. The chapter proposes that the fraught relationship between Lawrence and Luhan would prompt his three New Mexico tales, “St. Mawr,” “The Princess,” and “The Woman Who Rode Away.” All three are Pan-stories, in which Lawrence relocates the pagan energies of the great god Pan to the United States. This chapter also reads Lawrence’s American stories as “tales of out here,” as stories which touch on the three points--Anglo, Indian, Hispanic--of New Mexico’s ethnic triangle. This chapter discusses the ways in which Lawrence adopts and adapts American literary genres in these tales (American Romance, the Indian captivity narrative) in order to interrogate the relationship between gender and genre and the ideological premises of the U.S. national narrative.Less
This chapter discusses Lawrence’s American fiction, beginning with his abortive attempt to write an American novel based on the life of his hostess in New Mexico, Mabel Dodge Luhan. The chapter proposes that the fraught relationship between Lawrence and Luhan would prompt his three New Mexico tales, “St. Mawr,” “The Princess,” and “The Woman Who Rode Away.” All three are Pan-stories, in which Lawrence relocates the pagan energies of the great god Pan to the United States. This chapter also reads Lawrence’s American stories as “tales of out here,” as stories which touch on the three points--Anglo, Indian, Hispanic--of New Mexico’s ethnic triangle. This chapter discusses the ways in which Lawrence adopts and adapts American literary genres in these tales (American Romance, the Indian captivity narrative) in order to interrogate the relationship between gender and genre and the ideological premises of the U.S. national narrative.
