Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence

Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence PDF

Author: C.E. Nicholson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1990-06-18

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1349100927

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The essays collected in this volume offer a range of different approaches to the significance of the work of Margaret Laurence, historical, feminist, descriptive and thematic, in which critics from Europe, America and Canada offer assessments of this 20th century novelist.

Divining Margaret Laurence

Divining Margaret Laurence PDF

Author: Nora Foster Stovel

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 0773575030

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The most complete consideration of all the major writings of Margaret Laurence.

Challenging Territory

Challenging Territory PDF

Author: Christian Riegel

Publisher: University of Alberta

Published: 1997-05

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780888642899

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In a postmodern and postcolonial age, how do we approach the writing of Margaret Laurence? Challenging Territory demands of the reader a re-evaluation of the basic assumptions that underlie their understanding of Laurence's life and writing by addressing the full range of her writing. Laurence is presented as Canadian, colonial and postcolonial subject; as feminist, humanist and political active individual; and as essayist, translator, journalist, memoir writer and fiction writer. The essays stake out a critical territory as well as offer a challenge to territory previously mapped by the criticism - in addition to charting critical space never before traced.

Racial, Ethnic, Gender and Class Representations in Margaret Laurence’s Writings

Racial, Ethnic, Gender and Class Representations in Margaret Laurence’s Writings PDF

Author: Andreea Topor-Constantin

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2013-07-26

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1443850969

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Racial, Ethnic, Gender and Class Representations in Margaret Laurence’s Writings is a study on Canada, Canadian literature and Margaret Laurence’s works in particular, thus addressing various kinds of readership. This book avoids the danger of limiting the approach to solely focusing attention on Canada by presenting a thorough analysis of various literary genres, allowing the book to be of interest to all literature lovers. Furthermore, the book explores the parallelism between life and fiction, emphasising Laurence’s biographic and realist elements and their influence on the writer’s fictional writing, revealing real and imaginary worlds which would appeal to anybody’s literary needs. This major contribution to the already existent criticism of Margaret Laurence’s works lies in the analysis of her work as an entity, balancing both terms of the common binary oppositions: fiction versus non-fiction, Africa versus Canada, white versus Black or Metis. In spite of critical comments which might be raised, Andreea Topor-Constantin comments on how the voice of the marginal makes itself heard throughout the author’s books, underlying Laurence’s emphasis on characterisation and her genuine concern for people. This book covers all aspects of Laurence’s life and fiction: from the African to the writer’s Canadian background, from adults’ to children’s literature, from novels to short stories, from essays to letters, in order to challenge readers’ perceptions of race, ethnicity, gender and class.

Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination

Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination PDF

Author: Paul Comeau

Publisher: University of Alberta

Published: 2005-12-23

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780888644510

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Although at times painfully insecure about her creative ability and achievement, Margaret Laurence nevertheless remained fiercely loyal to her artistic vision, an archetypal vision of loss, exile and redemption that sought comprehensive expression in the epic mode that shapes the Bible, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, and ultimately the Manawaka world of Hagar Shipley, Rachel Cameron, Stacey MacAindra, and Morag Gunn. Paul Comeau traces the development of Margaret Laurence's epic voice from its tentative beginnings in her African fiction to its culmination in the epic Manawaka Cycle, a Dantesque journey through an infernal state of self-destructive pride, out of a purgatorial paralysis of self-doubt, and on to a kind of paradisal fulfillment in self-knowledge. Laurence discovered in epic a fitting mode at once to requite her debt to the ancestors and to break free of their influence to portray the world through the sight of her own eyes. In so doing, she became the enduring epic voice of a country and a generation.

Sisters Under the Skin: Margaret Laurence and Vaasanthi

Sisters Under the Skin: Margaret Laurence and Vaasanthi PDF

Author: Dr. Sheela P. Karthick

Publisher: Shanlax Publications

Published: 2022-01-01

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 9393737193

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The book is a masterpiece and should be kept in the bookshelf of every household, and also be read by all critical minded individuals, as to fully come to terms with what the women are passing through in the present day society.

Writing Grief

Writing Grief PDF

Author: Christian Riegel

Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press

Published: 2003-09-24

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 0887559689

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Margaret Laurence's much admired Manawaka fiction - The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House, and The Diviners – has achieved remarkable recognition for its compassionate portrayal of the attempt to find meaning and peace in ordinary life. In Writing Grief, Christian Riegel argues that the protagonists in these books achieve resolution through acts of mourning, placing this fiction within the larger tradition of writing that explores the nuances and strategies of mourning. Riegel's analysis alludes to sociological and literary antecedants of the study of mourning, including the tradition of elegy, from Derrida and Lacan to Freud, van Gennep, and Milton. The "work" of mourning is necessary to move from a state of emotional paralysis to one of acceptance and active engagement. Laurence's characters "perform the work of mourning ... returning over and over again to the key issues relating to loss," and, as Riegel's close examination of the texts suggests, are changed thereafter fundamentally and significantly. As an important study of one aspect of Laurence's oeuvre, Writing Grief not only illustrates how Laurence's own preoccupations with mourning are figured, but also how different ways of working through grief result in renewed potential for consolation and connection, and "a renewed definition of self."

Women in Exile and Alienation

Women in Exile and Alienation PDF

Author: Kaptan Singh

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-06-22

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1443896721

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Since World War II, exile and alienation have become two of the most prominent themes in world literature. Canadian and Indian literatures are no exception. Modern human civilisation is passing through a terrible ordeal following on from the catastrophic consequences of two world wars, and many people have been overwhelmed and overawed by the growth of science, technology and urbanisation. Alienation, a feeling of not belonging, has filled the life of modern man with uncertainties and disappointments, obstructions and frustrations. Indian and Canadian literatures are currently two of the most acclaimed forms of global literature, with major themes including a search for identity, a struggle for survival, and self and social isolation, and it is not surprising that female writers are major voices in both Indian and Canadian literature. There is a heavy imbalance of power between two sexes in both cultures, where men are considered to be domineering and the centre of the family while women are regarded as subordinate to men. Women’s suppression compels them to live in their self-exiled and alienated world. The works of Margaret Laurence and Anita Desai depict heart-rending facts and bitter realities which women have to face in an emotionless modern society. Since the patriarchal structure is prevalent in India and Canada, women are categorised as second-rate citizens and are treated as liabilities by their families due to a lack of financial power. In the absence of any economic, social, emotional, and financial support, they also consider themselves inferior to men. Time and again, they revolt against the mechanical and merciless treatment of their family and society, and sometimes they choose self-exile as a safeguard against the callous and selfish treatment of their family members. Their inner desire to revolt against an oppressive society and the prevailing cultural norm only increases their isolation. In their works, Laurence and Desai have unveiled the tortured psyche of sensitive women, who are unable to share their feelings with others and are destined to live an emotionally deprived life.

Space, Place and Hybridity in the National Imagination

Space, Place and Hybridity in the National Imagination PDF

Author: Christine Vandamme

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1527576620

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This volume explores space, place and hybridity in today’s multicultural societies with a strong emphasis on the role of art and spatial representations, in order to map out the complexity of modern nations and celebrate the creative powers of their highly dynamic communities and cultures. It considers how the very idea of the nation has evolved since the emergence and development of the idea of the nation-state at the end of the eighteenth century, and how art can reinvigorate representations of nation-states worldwide without relegating their minorities to the margin. Instead of merely focusing on the role of place and land in national representations, the book adopts a wider and more critical approach to space in the arts by investigating the notions of both hybridity and Bhabha’s “Third Space” in the fields of aesthetics, film studies and literature, with a particular emphasis on postcolonial literature.