D. H. Lawrence and the Sicilian myth of Persephone

Abstract

The use and appropriation of myth in modem literature is closely liked to a metaphysical concern with projecting a world view at times ironic which underpins a writer's vision of society. In the modem era Yeats's immersion into Irish nationalistic folklore was a means of creating his own mythopoeic vision of an Ireland in need of cultural renewal. For Joyce myth was, as T.S. Eliot famously remarked, a way of giving shape and significance to the panorama of futility and anarchy which was contemporary history. Eliot's fragmented vision of modern civilization necessitated the privileging of the quest of the holy grail on ancient fertility myths thereby giving a semblance of cohesion to fragmented experience.