Description
Book SynopsisDurrell and the City commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Alexandria Quartet with a collection of fourteen new essays by a group of international scholars and critics. The collection provides a critical consideration of Durrell's urban landscapes, from the London of his early novels to Avignon during World War II in his last great series, while focusing on the place that made him famous—the city of Alexandria—in order to provide a reassessment of his career and achievement.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction—Donald P. Kaczvinsky I.The Country and the City Chapter 1: "Rural Reception in Panic Spring and The Dark Labyrinth" —James M. Clawson Chapter 2: “Real and Unreal Cities: The Modernist Origins of Durrell’s Alexandria" —James Gifford II.Durrell’s Alexandria: Reconstructing the City of the Soma Chapter 3: “'The City Begins and Ends in Us': Durrell's City as Interior Space" —Linda Stump-Rashidi Chapter 4: "Alexandria: The City as Nexus" —Anna Lillios Chapter 5: "Strangers in a Strange Land" —Alice Bailey Cheylan Chapter 6: "Writing (on) Walls or the Palimpsest of Time in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet" —Corinne Alexandre-Garner and Isabelle Keller-Privat Chapter 7: Durrell's Alexandria Quartet: A Culinary Perspective —Merrianne Timko III.Cities, Places, and People Chapter 8: "From the Interior City: The White Negro Thinking in Pidgin" —Paul Lorenz Chapter 9: "Roses, Faeces and Vampires: The Carnivalesque in Durrell" —Fiona Tomkinson Chapter 10: "Reading the Ethics of Durrell's Avignon Quintet" —Dianne Vipond IV.Durrell and the American Literary Landscape Chapter 11: "'An Attention That Is Almost Holy': The Spirit of Provence in Durrell and Hemingway" —Matthew Nickel Chapter 12: "Reverie of Utopia and Actuality in the City: The Cases of Justine and Blanche DuBois" —Michiko Kawano Chapter 13: "'Where the Blue Algonquin Flows': Durrell, New York and the American ‘Spirit of Place’" —Donald P. Kaczvinsky Chapter 14: "Durrell's Alexandria Quartet: 50 Years Later" —Alan Warren Friedman Bibliography About the Contributors
