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

Subjects:

• Literature » World Literature
• Multicultural Studies » Canadian Studies
• Multicultural Studies » African Studies
• Women's Studies » Women in Literature & the Arts

Reviews:

• Valuable to students and Laurence scholars alike, the 18 essays in this collection of 'predominantly American scholarship' are assembled under four headings: 'Language, Theme, and Image,' 'Narrative Structure,' 'Multiculturalism,' amd 'Feminist Perspectives.'... All collections.
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• Endorsement From Donna Bennett, University of Toronto: New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism, a new collection of essays edited by Greta Coger, brings to our attention this mid-century pioneer in feminist writing. By outlining the characteristics of Margaret Laurence's writing that have been overlooked, these essays help us understand the importance of Laurence's work in context of a wide variety of current issues, such as multiculturalism, the treatment of the aged, and the relationship between feminist writing techniques to those of contemporary fiction.
• Endorsement From Robert Ross, editor, Antipodes
  The Edward A. Clark Center of Australian Studies
  The University of Texas at Austin: Greta Coger has done a great favor for a major Canadian writer--and for Margaret Laurence's readers around the world. Original, highly readable, scholarly, and current, the essays will be welcomed by those who are already Laurence admirers and should lead new readers to her work. The variety of approaches taken by the international contributors truly provide "new perspectives" on Laurence's work. It is a valuable book that brings together 18 intelligent ways of looking at a widely-read, but sometimes critically-neglected writer whose writing continues to bring forth diverse critical responses.

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