The Meaning of Lawrence's Advice to the Literary Critic

Abstract

Rather than simply register delight at the discovery that he has finally made it into the prestigious company of Freud, Nietzsche, and Lévi-Strauss, Lawrence's admirers would do better, I think, to use David Lodge's remark as the occasion to raise the question as to whether or not his famous 'dictum' is, in fact, sound. But before doing this we must first ask what he meant by it. 'Never,' Lawrence actually wrote, 'trust the artist. Trust the tale.' This mayor may not be describable as 'a cardinal principle of modern hermeneutics.' But whatever it, or something like it, might have meant to Nietzsche, to Freud or to Lévi-Strauss, what did Lawrence mean by it?