New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism

by Greta M. Coger

Overview

Nearly all of Laurence's works from Africa and Canada are critiqued in this volume. The essays highlight Laurence's innovative narrative styles, showing how her combinations of oral literary forms and unique shifts in tense and point of view help her achieve vivid character portrayals. In addition, viewing Laurence's prose as closely textured poetry, her use of language, theme, and image are carefully critiqued. The importance of Laurence's portrayal of women's experiences, most notably that of aging women, is viewed in a feminist framework. These new American perspectives on Laurence will be of interest to both scholars and students.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313290428
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/30/1996
Series:	Contributions in Women's Studies , #15
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Lexile:	1340L (what's this?)

About the Author

GRETA M.K. MCCORMICK is Instructor of English at Northwest Mississippi Community College. She has published numerous essays on international literatures in English, and compiled Index to Subjects, Proverbs, and Themes in the Writings of Wole Soyinka (Greenwood, 1988).

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Language, Theme, and Image in Laurence
Margaret Laurence: Novelist as Poet by Walter E. Swayze
The Angel and The Living Water: Metaphorical Networks and Structural Opposition by Michel Fabre
Stacey Cameron Macaindra: The Fires "This Time by Lyall H. Powers
A World Divided, A World Divined: Two North American Fictions by Neil Besner
Narrative Structure in Laurence
Hagar Shipley's Rage for Life: Narrative Technique in The Stone Angel by Alice Bell
Sisters, Symbols, and Structures: A Jest of God and The Fire-Dwellers by Nora Foster Stovel
Coherence in A Bird in the House by Bruce Stovel
Dividing The Diviners by Ken McLean
Multiculturalism in Laurence
War in the Manawaka Novels as Macrocosm, Fictionalized Biography, and Imaginative History by Greta M.K. McCormick Coger
Margaret Laurence of Hargeisa. A Discussion of A Tree for Poverty by Fiona Sparrow
Laurence and the Ancestral Tradition by Cecil Abrahams
"It Was Like the Book Says, but It Wasn't": Oral History in Laurence's The Diviners by Lynn Pifer
Feminist Perspectives in Laurence
Self-Alienation of the Elderly in Margaret Laurence's Fiction by Rosalie Murphy Baum
Coming to Terms with the Image of the Mother in The Stone Angel by Cynthia Taylor
The Subversive Voice in The Fire-Dwellers by Mitzi Hamovitch
Morag Gunn in Fictional Context: The Career Woman Theme in The Diviners by Susan Ward
Wordsmith and Woman: Morag Gunn's Triumph Through Language by Laurie Linderg
Writing a Woman Writer's Life: Celebration, Sorrow, and Pathos in Margaret Laurence's Memoir, Dance on the Earth by Alexandra Pett
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Examines the work of Laurence (d. 1987) whose fiction drew on Canadian prairie life, her Scottish heritage, and her time in several African countries. Among the 18 topics are metaphorical networks and structural opposition in The Stone Angel, coherence in A Bird in the House, the ancestral tradition, oral folk history, and her depiction of self-alienation in the elderly. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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