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| Ancestors and Gods |
| Margaret Laurence and the Dialectics of Identity |
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| Year of Publication: 2002 |
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| Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., New York, Oxford, Wien, 2002. 212 pp. |
ISBN 978-3-906767-56-7 / US-ISBN 978-0-8204-5627-0  pb. |
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| Sales price |
| SFR 69.00 |
€* 47.50 |
€** 48.80 |
€ 44.40 |
£ 40.00 |
US-$ 68.95 |
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includes VAT - only valid for Germany |
[Currency of invoice] |
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includes VAT - only valid for Austria |
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| Book synopsis |
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| This book examines the entire corpus of Margaret Laurence's writings from the point of view of the ambiguities and paradoxes that are an inherent feature of her work. This indeterminacy of meaning reflects the profoundly ambivalent attitude with which Laurence explored the issues dramatized in her books, foremost among which is that of individual and cultural identity. In the course of a series of close analyses of individual texts, it is argued that Laurence's vision tends to articulate itself through what appear to be irreconcilable oppositions, but that these oppositions are subjected to processes of symbolic mediation as the writer pursues their implications. Laurence's works can therefore best be approached dialectically, in terms of the radically different conceptions of life they simultaneously convey, and of the effort to arbitrate their conflicting claims through the act of writing itself. |
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| Contents |
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| Contents: Self-Distancing in Laurence's Travel Writings - Language and Alienation in This Side Jordan - The Limits of Community in The Tomorrow-Tamer - Negotiating Contraries in The Stone Angel - Liberating Voices in A Jest of God - The Fire-Dwellers and A Jest of God - Order and Anarchy in A Bird in the House - The River of Paradox in The Diviners. |
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| About the author(s)/editor(s) |
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| The Author: David Lucking is Professor of English at the University of Lecce, where he teaches both English and Canadian literature. He has published Plays Upon the Word: Shakespeare's Drama of Language, Beyond Innocence: Literary Transformations of the Fall, and Conrad's Mysteries: Variations on an Archetypal Theme. |
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