This book offers the first in-depth analysis of Lawrence Durrell’s entire poetic opus, from his early collections in the 1940s up to his last one published in 1973. Thirty years of Durrellian poetry are brought together in order to unveil the genesis of Durrell’s writing, both poetic and fictional, drawing links to his novels and residence books, which he kept writing at the same time. Durrell thus appears as first and foremost one of the greatest late modernist poets whose literary and epistemological investigations are to be understood in the light of a worldwide network of literary brotherhoods including T. S. Eliot, Michael Fraenkel, Henry Miller, and David Gascoyne. Simultaneously, this book shows why Durrell must also be read as the heir to the greatest English romantic poets (Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth) as well as to the French symbolists and modernists (from Baudelaire to Nerval, Valéry, and Cendrars).This comparative approach opens up a brand new perspective on Durrell that has not yet been broached by North American and English scholarship. The symbolic patterns, the stylistic ploys, and the aesthetic and philosophic tenets that characterize Durrell’s poetics account for the necessary back-and-forth reading that connects prose and poetry, the fictional and the lyrical, the descriptive and the abstract. Poetry excerpts, extracts from his residence books, novels, and essays highlight not only Durrell’s complex literary strategies but also the ontological quest of a writer who, although never at home with the world he lived in, strove to create a life-world, what semiologists call the “Umwelt.�

While suburbs provide a rich field of research for sociologists, architects, urbanists and anthropologists, they have not been given the same attention in literary and cultural studies. The Suburbs: New Literary Perspectives sets out to enrich the limited existing body of critical analysis on the subject with a landmark collection of essays offering a far larger perspective than the books or collections published so far on the topic. This interdisciplinary and wide-ranging approach includes literary and art studies, philosophy, and cultural comment. It examines the suburbs across cultural differences, contrasting British, South African and North American suburbs. The specificity of this book therefore lies in a cross-national and cross-continental exploration of these unchartered territories. The suburbs are redefined as those rebellious margins whose geographical borders are necessarily fuzzy and sketch out a common place where cultural frontiers can be transcended. They are, to use Sarah Nuttall's terminology, places of "entanglement" where contraries meet and where new ways of being in the world is reborn. Seen through the prism of art and literature, the suburbs may then be recognized, as philosopher Bruce Begout argues, as a "new way of thinking and making urban space."

This essay offers the first in-depth analysis of Lawrence Durrell's entire poetic opus, from his early collections in the 1940s up to his last one published in 1973. Thirty years of Durrellian poetry are brought together in order to unveil the genesis of Durrell's writing, both poetic and fictional, drawing links with his novels and residence books which he kept writing at the same time. Lawrence Durrell thus appears as first and foremost one of the greatest Late Modernist poets whose literary and epistemological investigations are to be understood in the light of a worldwide network of literary brotherhoods involving T.S. Eliot, Michael Fraenkel, Henry Miller and David Gascoyne. Simultaneously, this essay shows why Durrell must also be read as the heir to the greatest English Romantic poets (Byron, Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth) as well as to the French Symbolists and Modernists (from Baudelaire, to Nerval, Valery and Cendrars). This comparative approach opens up a brand new perspective on Lawrence Durrell that has not been broached yet by North American and English scholarship. The symbolic patterns, the stylistic ploys and the aesthetic and philosophic tenets that characterize Durrell's poetics account for the necessary back and fro reading that connects prose and poetry, the fictional and the lyrical, the descriptive and the abstract. Poetry excerpts, extracts from his residence books, novels and essays highlight not only Durrell's complex literary strategies but also the ontological quest of a writer who, although never at home with the world he lived in, strove to create a life-world, what semiologists call the "umwelt". This constitutive reality is the one that emerges within the clefts and cracks of the world, it is made of the barely legible signs that twinkle in the dark and that testify to the artist's ability to create a world out of the present material chaos.