The Plumed Serpent

by D. H. Lawrence

Overview

The Plumed Serpent is a 1926 political novel by D. H. Lawrence; Lawrence conceived the idea for the novel while visiting Mexico in 1923, and its themes reflect his experiences there. The novel was first published by Martin Secker's firm in the United Kingdom and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States; an early draft was published as Quetzalcoatl by Black Swan Books in 1995. The novel's plot concerns Kate Leslie, an Irish tourist who visits Mexico after the Mexican Revolution. She encounters Don Cipriano, a Mexican general who supports a religious movement, the Men of Quetzalcoatl, founded by his friend Don Ramón Carrasco. Within this movement, Cipriano is identified with Huitzilopochtli and Ramón with Quetzalcoatl. Kate eventually agrees to marry Cipriano, while the Men of Quetzalcoatl, with the help of a new President, bring about an end to Christianity in Mexico, replacing it with Quetzalcoatl worship.

The novel received negative reviews. Commentators have characterised it as fascist and an attack on Christianity, and seen it as expressing Lawrence's fears about the decline of the white race and belief in women's submission to men. It has also been interpreted as an expression of his personal political ambition and as having homoerotic aspects. Critics have disagreed about its literary merit. Some have found it inferior to his other work, but others have considered it his greatest accomplishment as a novelist, an assessment shared by Lawrence himself. The novel received attention in Mexico, where its early reception was positive, and it was praised by the poet Octavio Paz. However, this response was later displaced by Mexican post-revolutionary nationalism and post-colonial studies[citation needed]. The Plumed Serpent has been compared to works of Lawrence such as the novels Kangaroo (1923) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) and the essays Sketches of Etruscan Places and other Italian essays (1932), as well as to the work of the poet T. S. Eliot. (wikipedia.org)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798888303511
Publisher:	Bibliotech Press
Publication date:	01/09/2023
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

D. H. Lawrence, whose fiction has had a profound influence on twentieth-century literature, was born on September 11, 1885, in a mining village in Nottinghamshire, England. His father was an illiterate coal miner, his mother a genteel schoolteacher determined to lift her children out of the working class. His parents' unhappy marriage and his mother's strong emotional claims on her son later became the basis for Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913), one of the most important autobiographical novels of this century.   In 1915, his masterpiece, The Rainbow, which like it's companion novel Women In Love (1920) dealt frankly with sex, was suppressed as indecent a month after its publication. Aaron's Road (1922); Kangaroo (1923), set in Australia; and The Plumed Serpent (1926), set in Mexico, were all written during Lawrence's travels in search of political and emotional refuge and healthful climate. In 1928, already desperately ill, Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterly's Lover. Banned as pornographic, the unexpurgated edition was not allowed legal circulation in Britain until 1960. D. H. Lawrence called his life, marked by struggle, frustration, and despair "a savage enough pilgrimage." He died on March 2, 1930, at the age of 44, in Vence, France.

Date of Birth:

September 11, 1885

Date of Death:

March 2, 1930

Place of Birth:

Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England

Place of Death:

Vence, France

Education:

Nottingham University College, teacher training certificate, 1908

Table of Contents

General editor's preface; Acknowledgements; Chronology; Cue-titles; Introduction; The Plumed Serpent (Quetzalcoatl); Explanatory notes; Glossary of selected Spanish terms; Textual apparatus; Appendixes.

Editorial Reviews

Lawrence writes on rebirth and reflects on the ambience of Mexico and New Mexico in this 1926 novel of a woman whose passions inspire her to flee an unexciting husband.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly