Lawrence Durrell's Major Novels, Or, The Kingdom of the Imagination

Donald P. Kaczvinsky

Jan. 1997 · Susquehanna University Press

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This book provides a thematic reading of all of Lawrence Durrell's major novels, while also considering Durrell's incorporation of other art forms - especially painting, architecture, and horticulture - to structure his fiction. Building on insights found in Durrell's travel essays and the psychoanalytic theories of Georg Groddeck, a contemporary of Freud whom Durrell admired and promoted, author Donald P. Kaczvinsky suggests that the artist-heroes of the major novels will be exposed to a place and a culture that is debilitating, unhealthy, and diseased. The Black Book, Durrell's first major novel, is a "black romance." Lawrence Lucifer is on a quest, whose success depends on his ability to reject the spiritual and material comforts of a medieval English culture and accept the pagan world of Greece.