Waterscapes as Other Spaces in Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet

Bibliographic Data

ID20156478
AuthorsAllyson Kreuiter (0000-0003-0325-8325, University of South Africa, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume31
Issue4
Pages71-89
Publication date2015-10-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387
PublisherUnisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA)
DOI10.1080/02564718.2015.1084823
OpenAlexW1717684153
LanguageEN
References cited25

The mirage with its disruptive and deceptive phantasmagorical features is an image repeated in many of the numerous waterscapes located in Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet. Viewed through memory, the topographical reality of the Quartet’s water- scapes becomes a space of illusion and yet, at the same time, a real space perfectly ordered, except that it seems to remain outside of time. Hence, Durrell's water- scapes ambivalently play between the real and unreal of Other spaces in a single space. This essay examines selected waterscapes in The Alexandria Quartet through the theoretical and imaginative lens of Michel Foucault's conceptualisation of the heterotopia. It is contended that the mirror of the heterotopia, with its distortion of time, offers an important theoretical entry into reading Durrell's waterscapes as Other spaces. However, related to this, the article argues that Durrell's excessive and uncanny representation of these waterscapes, as remote and unreal places, acts to disturb a sense of reality, thereby establishing these Other spaces as both heterotopic and Gothic loci

Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Illusion · Linguistics · Politics · Uncanny · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Philosophy · Psychology · Spatial and Cultural Studies · Travel Writing and Literature · Anatomy

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