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

(Hardback)

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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.

Reviews

"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."-Robert Ross, editor, Antipodes The Edward A. Clark Center of Australian Studies The University of Texas at Austin
"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."-Donna Bennett, University of Toronto
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.-Choice
"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."-Choice

Author Bio

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).