{"id":1497,"date":"2019-12-06T09:36:15","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T17:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/?page_id=1497"},"modified":"2019-12-20T21:12:23","modified_gmt":"2019-12-21T05:12:23","slug":"cfp-toulouse","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/cfp-toulouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for Papers"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Miracle Ground XXI \u2013 Call for Papers<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cMysticisms, Heresies and Heterotopias in the Works of Lawrence Durrell\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Toulouse, France,\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>28\u201330 May 2020<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The International Lawrence Durrell Society, dedicated to promote the work of the British author Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), invites proposals for papers to be presented at a May 2020 conference in Toulouse, France.<\/p>\n

From his early years as a writer, Durrell steeped himself in the works and ideas of Plato, Virgil, Ovid and other classical writers. He was equally interested in the worlds of the mystics as reflected in the works of Plotinus and the Kabbala, as well as the cultures of the ancient Egyptians and Copts. Not surprisingly, having settled in 1957 in the south of France where he lived until his death, Durrell\u2019s interests came to include the ideas of the Gnostics and the Cathars and their alleged influence on the Order of the Knights Templar.<\/p>\n

As Durrell developed his ideas from their foundations in the thinking of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans whose influence on his tetralogy, The Alexandria Quartet<\/em>, is evident, so the ideas of Buddhism and the Gnostics permeate his later novel sequence, The Avignon Quintet.<\/em><\/p>\n

Durrell\u2019s works\u2014travel books, fiction and poetry\u2014reflect the ideas of the mystics and of all those prepared to challenge conventional thinking through the heresies that have permeated the Western world from its earliest recorded writings.<\/p>\n

The various forms of Western and Eastern mysticism that underlie Durrell’s fiction and poetry question the pre-established, orthodox patterns of thought and undermine the oneness of truth, offering readers a heterotopia from which to re-examine the relationships between history and the art of writing.<\/p>\n

Convening at the Universit\u00e9 Toulouse \u2013 Jean Jaur\u00e8s, a city whose culture reflects many of the themes and ideas found in Durrell\u2019s writings, the Durrell Society seeks to promote discussion of twentieth-century writers who share Durrell\u2019s ideas. Although papers on any aspect of Durrell\u2019s writing are welcome, the conference organizers particularly encourage consideration of writers contemporary to Durrell including novelists, philosophers and thinkers with whom Durrell might have been sympathetic.<\/p>\n

Topics for papers might include, but are not limited to the following:<\/p>\n