ABSTRACT
The Margate shelter - its English location and its global connections, as well as its resonance for Eliot's aesthetic project more broadly - provides a powerful image of the shifting geopolitics of modernism. As an Argentinean academic living and working in Kent, the spatial dislocation of the Argentine capital in a remote English coastal town demanded elucidation. The rapid emergence of 'merry Margate' as the health and leisure resort of Britain precipitated the arrival of a plethora of modern facilities and rapid urbanisation designed to cater to large influxes of visitors, whether hospital patients or recreational holidaymakers. The Buenos Ayres sea-front terraces were rapidly integrated into an urban and natural landscape surrounding the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital that aptly encapsulated the catchy, inclusive slogan 'health for all'. This introduction also presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to rethink the discursivity of the infernal paradise myth.
