Honors

HNRS 268-01: The Alexandria Quartet

This course will combine an intensive look at the development of a masterwork of English literature with an extensive look at the place and the history that inspired its creation. We will focus on the four novels of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, the mystical and sensuous collection placed in the city of Alexandria, structured to reflect Einstein’s relativity, and evocative of ancient mysticism and “a pessimistic gnosticism.” Generally agreed to be among the most brilliant fictions of the twentieth century, the Quartet is at once a culmination of modernist literature and an exploration of ancient cultic beliefs, magic systems, sexual passion, and international intrigue.

Situated centrally on the northern edge of Egypt, and home to Alexander the Great and Cleopatra, Alexandria has always been a city of strange and exotic mixtures blending to embody much of the history of Europe, the Levant, and the East.For centuries a center of learning that melded European, Asian, and African ideas, perspectives, languages, cultures, and beliefs, Alexandria has served as both the ground and the medium of a variety of great thinkers and writers through the ages. We’ll look at the role of this place in creating Durrell’s Quartet, and we’ll explore the important connections among place, period, and art in writers as different as medieval Moslem mystics, Jewish Kabbalists, and modern novelists. We’ll look at Alexandria as the center of syncretic beliefs like gnosticism and we’ll explore the growth, development, and influence of hermetic magic from its inception in Greco-Roman Alexandria, to its re-emergence in twentieth-century literature.

We will, of course, focus on a close reading of the Quartet. Delving into Alexandria’s past, and Durrell’s sources, we will also read selections from the Corpus Hermeticum, the Nag Hammadi Library, poems of C.P. Cavafy, works of ancient and medieval magic and mysticism.

Students will be given the opportunity to extend this course by traveling with Professor Hood to the International L. Durrell Conference, Paris, France in July.

Spring Term: 2008

Credits: 4

Fulfills: GE Requirement in Humanities (U)

Cross-listed: ENGL-298-01

Meeting times: 18:30-20:50 W

Instructor: Richard Hood

Open to: Juniors/Seniors Only. First-years and Sophomores consent of instructor.