Mr Masson and the lost cities: a Victorian journey to the edges of remembrance

Richardson, E.

doi:10.1093/crj/cls008

Mr Masson and the lost cities: a Victorian journey to the edges of remembrance

Richardson, E.

Authors

Professor Edmund Richardson edmund.richardson@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

James Lewis lived at the crossroads between remembrance and forgetfulness. He was at once spy, fáquír, pioneering archaeologist, and British deserter under a death-sentence. Escaping across India in 1827, he cast aside his former name and became Charles Masson. This article traces his subsequent journey into Afghanistan, into the blank spaces of the map, in search of the lost cities of Alexander the Great. Searching for antiquity, erasing his own past, his excavations led to the discovery of Alexandria of the Caucasus, on the plains of Bagram. His pursuit of the ancient world is extraordinary: mendacious, full of longing, groundbreaking, hovering between fact and fiction as artfully as himself. This article is likewise a dialogue between the desire to remember and the desire to forget — and it argues that in narratives of classical reception, remembrance should not take the stage unchallenged; that which has been erased, and that which has been forgotten may be equally essential, when seeking to understand relationships with the past.

Citation

Richardson, E. (2013). Mr Masson and the lost cities: a Victorian journey to the edges of remembrance. Classical Receptions Journal, 5(1), 84-105. https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/cls008

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Jan 1, 2013
Deposit Date	May 11, 2013
Publicly Available Date	Mar 24, 2015
Journal	Classical Receptions Journal
Print ISSN	1759-5134
Electronic ISSN	1759-5142
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	5
Issue	1
Pages	84-105
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/cls008

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This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Classical Receptions Journal following peer review. The version of record [insert complete citation information here] is available online at: xxxxxxx http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/crj/cls008.