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The Corfiot Landscape and Lawrence Durrell’s Pilgrimage: The Colo-nial Palimpsest in ‘Oil for the Saint; Return to Corfu’
- Author(s):
- James Gifford (see profile)
- Date:
- 2003
- Group(s):
- LLC 20th- and 21st-Century English and Anglophone, Postcolonial Studies, TC Postcolonial Studies
- Subject(s):
- British literature
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Postcolonial English literature
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6183423B
- Abstract:
- Durrell subverts the colonial mindset that allows him to define and delineate a foreign landscape for foreign readers, while nonetheless engaging in an attempt at reconciliation—a pilgrimage—between his various adopted ‘homes.’ Focusing on “Oil for the Saint,” I argue that a close examination of the physical landscape of Corfu shows that Durrell ‘dupes’ the trusting reader into a series of misconceptions. By performing the role of the colonial traveler meekly fulfilling his conciliatory pilgrimage to an imagined home and real shrine, Durrell’s narratorgives a disturbingly exact rendition of the tourist-reader’s expectations of such a voyage and place. In so doing, the text subverts the reader’s easy acceptance of the travel narrative as a means to ‘knowing’ a place or people, while it leaves the reader with an uncanny perception of himself or herself mirrored in the foreign ‘deus loci.’
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article Show details
- Pub. Date:
- 2003
- Journal:
- In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 2
- Page Range:
- 181 - 196
- ISSN:
- 0971-9474
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 5 years ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial
- Share this:
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The Corfiot Landscape and Lawrence Durrell’s Pilgrimage: The Colo-nial Palimpsest in ‘Oil for the Saint; Return to Corfu’