Islomania, Dilettantism, and the Devolutionary Vision of Lawrence’s The Man Who Loved Islands

Abstract

<p>This study investigates how science (i.e., Darwinian perspectives) and myth inform the discourse and structure of D.H. Lawrence’s <em>The Man Who Loved Islands</em>. The study posits that the novella harbors a dialectical view of devolution in the context of the detrimental biocultual and cognitive implications of the modern cults of dilettantism and dandyism. Following an integrative approach that conjoins the archetypal, the cultural, and Darwinian perspectives, the study argues that, in terms of technique, Lawrence’s satirical novella employs what Lawrence Durrell termed “islomania” (obsession with islands) to foreground dilettantism as a flawed vision that sidesteps anthropocentricity as well as biocentricity. Moreover, it employs the master image of the desexualized bourgeois dilettante self that takes on the archetypal guise of anti-Eros to conceptualize the idea of devolution, or rather the devolutionary. Another technique that the novella engages is a disinterested authorial tone. Like in scientific discourse, the text is projected as illustrative of a fundamental, universal law or axiom that can harbor an empirical gist: what detrimental pathologies certain general contingencies and cultural practices may effect? In short, as a mock utopia, Lawrence's novella is about the insurvivability of the radical self that succeeds in demonizing heterogeneity and language.</p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><em>: </em>D.H. Lawrence, Darwinism in literature, Dilettantism, Dandyism, Biology in literature, Islands in literature</p>