Resurrection, Renaissance, Rebirth

This book explicates Daphne du Maurier's religious meanderings, and their psychological and political consequences. Underlying this treatment of her work is the concept of the palimpsest. In reality this is a twice-written document frequently containing a Pagan text which has been overlaid by a Christian one, but where the original text bleeds back over time. In theory this is a textual space where disparate texts collide and collude in an involuted manner. The approach taken is of particular relevance for an author whose life and work can be demonstrated to portray a debate between Christianity and other religiously inspired philosophies, but who also begs the reader to pass beyond a superficial reading of her oeuvre to discover this interplay in operation. This book also reveals du Maurier's fascination for key figures and thoughts from the Renaissance, which in turn were inspired by the works of Plato, leading to the development of 'Greece' as a mental landscape. Two separate but related conclusions are drawn, firstly that du Maurier has been spectralised by the Renaissance and secondly that du Maurier's life and work, taken together, can be read as an involuted palimpsest.