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Brucker, Barbara S. "Das Ganze, dessen Teile wir sind : zu Tradition und Erfahrung des inneren Raumes bei Doris Lessing /." Würzburg : Königshausen & Neumann, 1999. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb38919699z.
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Ba, Ginette. "L'Oeuvre africaine de Doris Lessing." Lille 3 : ANRT, 1988. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb37602504m.
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Rathke, Annemarie. "Doris Lessing, Yvonne Vera: comparative views of Zimbabwe /." Heidelberg : Winter, 2008. http://d-nb.info/99103273X/04.
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García, Navarro Carmen. "La vejez como materia literaria en la narrativa reciente de Doris Lessing /." Almería : Universidad de Almería, 2003. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb400432864.
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Hung, Shu-Ming. "Intersubjectivity in the fiction of Doris Lessing." Thesis, Durham University, 2012. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5936/.
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In this thesis, I will be examining selective works by the novelist Doris Lessing. The aim of the thesis is to examine Lessing’s oeuvre by approaching her fiction as an attempt to understand the subject as an effect of intersubjectivity. The thesis approaches the question of intersubjectivity through a broadly psychoanalytic framework, not only engaging with Lessing’s own particular interests in psychoanalysis, but also standing back and reframing her work through approaches to intersubjectivity available in work by Freud and Jung, Klein, and object relational and existential dynamic psychologies. The thesis will, throughout, endeavour to situate psychoanalytic approaches in specifically historical and political contexts, also drawing on phenomenology to examine Lessing’s depiction of a transcendental mode of experience which is reached through an ongoing evolutionary consciousness. Her dialectical positioning of the subject reveals a restless struggle towards a conciliation between self and others. The thesis reflects a trajectory of Lessing’s work from her earlier African novels to later writing, The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World. The thesis begins by examining the structure of the family and mother-daughter relationships in the context of the historically specific political milieu of post-war apartheid in South Africa; it ends by examining the question of the availability of an ethics of care in Thatcherite Britain as reflected in the Ben novels. Melanie Klein’s work and the later object-relations theory influenced by it, are adopted to provide a frame through which to try to illuminate Lessing’s concern with the possibility of motivating positive interactions between self and others, and as an alternative to the tragic liberal view of the self as an anxious isolate proposed by Freud. In each chapter, the thesis focuses on the variety of Lessing’s formal experiments in her attempt to develop a late ethics of care built on a foundation of intersubjectivity. This emergent vision of the self opens up the possibility of reconstituting new modes of interaction between the self and the outer world: Lessing uses her fictional worlds to posit visionary possibilities in the world outside the fiction. Often employing critical modes of the Utopian and Apocalyptic, Lessing envisions the possibility of a new and fluid community that is constituted on the foundation of a revised albeit fragile ethics of care. Her fiction suggests that the power of creation and imagination necessary to realise such a vision belongs not only to the artist, but is also available for development in the psychosocial journey towards a new democratic subjectivity that might realise a new public order.
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Davis, J. "Visionary realism : From George Eliot to Doris Lessing." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.375137.
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Ba, Ginette. "L'oeuvre africaine de Doris Lessing : thèmes et mythes." Paris 3, 1987. http://www.theses.fr/1987PA030065.
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L'oeuvre africaine de doris lessing constitue une etape importante de sa production litteraire. Elle s'inspire des trente premieres annees que l'auteur a passees en rhodesie du sud. Les principaux livres auxquels cette etude fait allusion sont les quatre premiers tomes des "enfants de la violence", les nouvvelles africaines, vaincue par la brousse, going home, in pursuit of the english. Les articles ecrits par l'auteur sur la rhodesie font egalement partie des sources sur lesquelles est basee cette analyse. Tous ces ouvrages ont pour cadre l'afrique du sud. Les themes et les mythes developpes par lessing y sont analyses car le fond revet une importance plus grande que la forme dans l'oeuvre africaine de lessing. La premiere partie de notre etude parle des mythes sur lesquels est fondee la societe sud-africaine. La comparaison entre les frontieres americaine et sud-africaine revele les analogies mais aussi les differences en tre l'univers des pionniers americains et celui des pionniers sud-africains. Le deuxieme chapitre traite plus particulierement de l'influence de la nature sud-africaine sur les personnages de lessing. Le paradoxe reside dans l'attrait et la repulsion qu'exerce le veld sur les sud-africains blancs selon qu'il symbolise l'evasion ou la frustration. Le point fort de cette analyse est enfin l'etude du probleme de l'alienation dans l'oeuvre africaine de lessing. Les blancs refusent de s'adapter a leurs nouvelles conditions de vie avec l'illusion de pouvoir retourner en angleterre. Les noirs subissent l'oppression de la communaute blanche et deviennent des etrangers sur leur propre sol. Le lecteur apprend, a travers la lecture de l'oeuvre africaine de lessing a confronter les personnages qu'elle met en scene a sa propre realiteDoris lessing's african fiction is an important step in her literary production. It is influenced by the thirty years she spent in south rhodesia. The main novels this study deals with are the first four books of "children of violence". The collected african stories, the grass is singing, going home, in pursuit of the english, lessing wrote some essays about rhodesia which are reported in this study. The characteristic of this fiction is that it is set in south africa. The myths and themes are indeed more important than the analysis of form in lessing's fiction. The south-african society is based on many myths. The american and the south-african frontier have some points in common but are quite different. The second part is about the influence of nature on lessing's characters. It is at the same time the symbol of freedom and of frustration. But the main point is lessing's dealing with alienation. The white south-africans don't want to adapt themselves to their new home and go on living with the illusion of returning to great britain. The black people on the other hand are the victims of white oppression and become more and more separated from their mother-country. Through doris lessing's fiction, the reader can compare the characters' world to the world he lives in
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Winther, Stefanie. "Weibliche Initiation in den Romanen von Virginia Woolf und Doris Lessing." Trier Wiss. Verl. Trier, 2004. http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2773366&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.
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Gray, William. "The influence of Sufism on the works of Doris Lessing." Thesis, University of Ulster, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.414016.
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Hunter, Eva Shireen. "The mother-daughter conflict in selected works by Doris Lessing." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7592.
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Bibliography: leaves 166-180.The central characters in Doris Lessing's novels are usually women struggling to shape for themselves a new and authentic identity in a changing world. In this study it is argued that this quest involves the Lessing character in a conflict less with any man than with another woman. This woman is the mother. The younger woman's task is to resist the compulsion to become like her mother and so lead a narrow, entirely domesticated life. The theme of the mother-daughter conflict is given its first extensive examination in this study. Three of Lessing's works are analysed in detail, while brief reference is made to nearly all of her novels and some African short stories. The three works selected, The Grass is Singing (1950), "To Room Nineteen" (1963), and The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1980), mark the beginning, an approximate mid-point, and the conclusion of the theme under discussion. They are also works that have not, as yet, enjoyed the exhaustive critical attention given to the Children of Violence series and The Golden Notebook.
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BREVET, BARBAUD ANNE LAURE. "Le sujet et ses reflets dans l'oeuvre romanesque de doris lessing." Paris 3, 1998. http://www.theses.fr/1998PA030074.
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Dans les romans de dons lessing, il existe une quete de l'unite subjective visant a la formation de l'individu, a travers une ecriture dont l'objet est de rassembler les fragment multiples et contradictoires de l'experience vecue et de l'histoire. Dans les roman autobiographiques, la narration dite + a la troisieme personne ; est toujours sous-tendue par un + je ;, ce qui a pour effet de transmuer la representation traditionnellement realiste en un discours bivocal, renvoyant de maniere indirecte a une image plausible du sujet de l'ecriture aussi le systeme de reflets dans le texte lessinien s'organise-t-il autour du sujet fictif intratextuel, refletant et reflecteur, dont l'identite individuelle s'avere a la fois transcendee e constituee par l'experience d'un espace speculaire inconscient. Tandis que le recit tend a figurer l'avenement d'une identite, qui, en derniere instance, ressortit a l'ipseite du texte, les dispositifs scripturaux, rythmes ou motifs, refletent les origines subjectives du processus de creation litteraire. L'ecriture speculaire offre une narration complexe, fragmentee en recits reflexifs, enchassants ou enchasses. Le roman lessinien, par sa visee memorialiste, aboutit a une combinatoire evenementielle fondee sur la reprise, la redondance, voire le ressassement, tout en convoquant une multiplicite dialogique de recits. L'evenement vecu ainsi repris, rememore. Interprete et ecrit passe necessairement par le filtre analytique de la litterature, ou il se voit reflechi au miroir de la conscience ecrivanteThroughout her novels, doris lessing is seeking to build the subjective oneness of individual self, using her art to reassemble the multiple, often contradictory facets of personal life in its relations with collective history. The narrative handling of this issue, particularly in lessing's autobiographical novels, presents itself as a 'third-person', omniscient 'voice', which nonetheless indirectly conveys the utterance of a tirst-person' self. As a result, traditional representation is reshaped into bivocal discourse, diffusely reflecting a plausible mirror-image of the writer at work. Hence the narrative patterns of reflection appear to be connected to the main character at the core of lessing's fiction, whose role as a fictitious, intradiegetic self is to diffract and focalize a personal image of reality. Besides, selfhood reveals itself as being transcended as well as built up when confronted to the inner mirror of the unconscious. Apart from attempting to state the birth of an individuality - which is eventually relevant to the singular qualities of lessing's novels themselves -, textual devices such as the arrangement of stylistic rhythms and patterns allude to the subjective origins of the writing process. In this respect, metafictional writing provides the reader with the complexities of discontinuous narration, for its 'reflexive' / 'self-conscious' pieces can be regarded, according to their textual location, either a'embedding' or 'embedded'. Since doris lessing's novels also aim at recording the spirit of the times, her fiction leads up to combine re-used material and to ground the action in repetition, indeed redundancy, while creating a variety of dialogic, self-contained stories. Thus reconsidered, remembered and necessarily interpreted, written events are filtered through the prism literature, where they come to be mirrored by the
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Galin, Müge. "The path of love : Sufism in the novels of Doris Lessing /." The Ohio State University, 1992. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1343749371.
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Chauchix, Danièle. "L'Ecriture des femmes de lettres maghrébines d'expression française en comparaison avec l'écriture africaine de Doris Lessing." Lille 3 : ANRT, 1986. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb375946329.
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Rodgers, Catherine. "Form and self in selected works of Marguerite Duras and Doris Lessing." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.328598.
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Boussedra, Evelyne. "Difficulté des relations humaines et solitude dans les romans de Doris Lessing." Lille 3 : ANRT, 1987. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb375946867.
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Machado, Elisabete Andreia Magalhães. "Tradução de "Through the Tunnel" e "England versus England" de Doris Lessing." Dissertação, Porto : [Edição do Autor], 2011. http://aleph.letras.up.pt/F?func=find-b&find_code=SYS&request=000212138.
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Doris Lessing foi a autora eleita para realização desta tese de mestrado. Entre diversos contos que compõem as obras da autora, “Through the Tunnel” e “England versus England”, cujas traduções sugeridas são “A passagem do Túnel” e “Inglaterra contra Inglaterra”, foram os seleccionados. Em adição à tradução, foi realizado um trabalho de pesquisa que visou encontrar outras obras e contos traduzidos para português. Foi ainda elaborada uma busca por notícias que demonstrassem a recepção da autora na imprensa de Portugal. A conclusão desta investigação mostrou que existem diversas publicações da autora, revelando a sua importância no panorama literário britânico e português.
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Myler, Kerry Sara. "Doris Lessing and R.D. Laing : madness and the matter of the body." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2010. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/337559/.
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With the publication of The Divided Self in 1960, R. D. Laing initiated the British ‘anti-psychiatry’ movement which was to challenge the hegemony of conventional medical and psychoanalytical models of madness during that decade and beyond. Anti-psychiatric thinking coincided with the beginning of the second wave of feminism and the two movements coalesced within a number of literary texts, most notably Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. However, whilst Lessing appears to agree with Laing’s account of schizophrenia and, indeed, largely bases her own representations of madness on his understanding of that experience, her texts nevertheless struggle to fully realise the potential of his theories for women. With reference to The Golden Notebook and her later novels The Four-Gated City and Briefing for a Descent into Hell, I argue that Lessing’s fiction complicates Laing’s theories by demonstrating the significance of the sex/gender system, so conspicuously absent in his works, to women’s experiences of schizophrenia. Lessing’s ‘madness novels’ suggest that Laing’s ultimate aim to deconstruct the sanity/madness binary remains unrealised for the madwoman because of his inattention to that binary’s associative opposition: male/female. This thesis examines Lessing’s engagement with Laing and argues that any straightforward relationship between his theory and her fiction is complicated by the discourses of gendered embodiment he fails to account for but which continues to define and bind Lessing’s female characters. Using contemporary feminist body theory, I read the female body as a site of contention in and between Lessing’s and Laing’s texts and, finally, as (an) irresolvable ‘matter’ in anti-psychiatry’s understanding of the experience of madness.
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Machado, Elisabete Andreia Magalhães. "Tradução de "Through the Tunnel" e "England versus England" de Doris Lessing." Master's thesis, Porto : [Edição do Autor], 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10216/60900.
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Doris Lessing foi a autora eleita para realização desta tese de mestrado. Entre diversos contos que compõem as obras da autora, “Through the Tunnel” e “England versus England”, cujas traduções sugeridas são “A passagem do Túnel” e “Inglaterra contra Inglaterra”, foram os seleccionados. Em adição à tradução, foi realizado um trabalho de pesquisa que visou encontrar outras obras e contos traduzidos para português. Foi ainda elaborada uma busca por notícias que demonstrassem a recepção da autora na imprensa de Portugal. A conclusão desta investigação mostrou que existem diversas publicações da autora, revelando a sua importância no panorama literário britânico e português.
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Yang, Wei-Yun. "Doris Lessing's use of Sufi teaching stories : a study of the literary treatment of the theme of transformation in some recent novels by Doris Lessing." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.309742.
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Casablancas, i. Cervantes Anna. "Closing circles: the construction of mother archetypes in five novels by doris lessing." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/400144.
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Aquesta tesi investiga la construcció i desenvolupament dels personatges femenins a l´obra de Doris Lessing, considerant especialment la relació personal que estableixen amb el concepte de maternitat.
El capítol 1 ofereix una revisió dels diferents enfocaments existents sobre l’escriptura de Doris Lessing, i també un repàs al seu context cultural i teòric, parant atenció a la psicoanàlisi i el feminisme i especialment, dins d´aquests camps d´estudi, a la psicoanàlisi Junguiana i Lacaniana i al feminisme post-Lacanià. A més, també planteja la qüestió de la figura materna a la novel·la postmoderna i el lloc que hi ocupa.
El cos de l’estudi analitza cinc personatges representatius del cànon de Lessing, que daten de diferents períodes de la seva carrera. Cada figura ocupa un capítol separat de la tesi, que es centra en el seu desenvolupament intern: així, el capítol 2 examina la Mary Turner (The Grass is Singing, 1950); el capítol 3, l’Anna Wulf (The Golden Notebook, 1962); el capítol 4, la Kate Brown (The Summer Before the Dark, 1973); el capítol 5, la Harriet Lovatt (The Fifth Child, 1988); i el capítol 6, l’Emily McVeagh (Alfred and Emily, 2008). Es proposa una lectura Junguiana tot analitzant el procés d’individuació que els personatges proven d´assolir per tal d’adquirir una identitat plena. Amb aquest objectiu, es descriuen i s’interpreten diferents conjunts d’arquetips Junguians presents en les novel·les segons el paper que juguen en l’evolució de les protagonistes. Cal afegir que s’examinen altres conceptes psicoanalítics fonamentals, tals com la influència Lacaniana subjacent que s’evidencia en la recreació de l’estadi del mirall, o en la importància de nocions com “l’abjecció” de Julia Kristeva. Alguns motius textuals com els somnis, els records, les fantasies i la imaginació dels personatges resulten centrals per a la discussió.
En l’última secció, després de l’anàlisi de les cinc novel·les, s’estableix un fil conductor entre elles pel que fa a la construcció de la identitat. A més, queda justificat l´ús de les teories psicoanalítiques de Jung i (en menor mesura) Lacan com a base per a una lectura, ja que permet aclarir aquest procés de construcció i evolució. D’altra banda, aquest marc teòric permet treure conclusions sobre les diferents reinterpretacions de l’arquetip de la mare per part de Lessing i, com a conseqüència, sobre el lloc que la maternitat ocupa a la literatura contemporània. Finalment, el concepte de circularitat es treballa especialment, a diferents nivells: primer, com a estructura que conforma cadascuna de les novel·les pel que fa a la forma i al contingut, com a mode de creació artística associada al mite i als símbols, o com a patró general de tota l’obra de Lessing.The present thesis investigates the construction and development of Doris Lessing’s female characters, taking into account their personal relationship with their potential motherhood. Chapter 1 offers a review of the different approaches to the writing of Doris Lessing, as well as an overview of its cultural and theoretical background, focusing on psychoanalysis and feminism, and, most especially, on Jungian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-Lacanian feminism. In addition, the question of the mother figure in the postmodern novel and the place it occupies is also raised. The body of the study analyses five representative characters of Lessing’s canon, dating from different stages in her career. Each figure occupies a separate chapter in the thesis, which focuses on internal development: chapter 2 examines Mary Turner (The Grass is Singing, 1950); chapter 3, Anna Wulf (The Golden Notebook, 1962); chapter4, Kate Brown (The Summer Before the Dark, 1973); chapter 5, Harriet Lovatt (The Fifth Child, 1988); and chapter 6, Emily McVeagh (Alfred and Emily, 2008). A Jungian reading is offered by analysing the individuation process they are trying to undergo as characters trying to achieve a full identity. In order to do so, different sets of Jungian archetypes present in the novels are outlined and interpreted according to their role in the evolution of the protagonists. Moreover, other prevalent psychoanalytic concepts are examined, such as the underlying Lacanian influence made evident by the recreation of the mirror stage, or the importance of such notions as Kristevan “abjection”. Some textual details as dreams, memories, fantasies and imagination of the characters are central to the discussion. In the last section, after the analysis of the five novels, a common thread is established among them in terms of identity building. Moreover, the psychoanalytic theories of Jung and (to a lesser degree) Lacan as a basis for a reading is justified as they clarify this process of construction and development. In addition, this theoretical framework allows for conclusions on Lessing’s different reinterpretations of the mother archetype, and, subsequently, the place of motherhood in contemporary literature is reinterpreted according to Lessing’s work. Finally, special mention is made to circularity, at different levels; namely: as the structure that underlies each of the novels either formally or conceptually, as a mode of artistic creation associated with myth and symbol, and as the general pattern of Lessing’s entire career.
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Munnick, Yvonne. "Ecriture romanesque et engagement politique chez doris lessing, nadine gordimer et andre brink." Toulouse 2, 1990. http://www.theses.fr/1990TOU20014.
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A partir de deux romanciers sud-africains, nadine gordimer et andre brindk, et des oeuvres appartenant a la "periode africaine" de doris lessing, est examine, dans une etude de type socio-critique, le rapport qui existe entre l'engagement des differents auteurs et la forme litteraire choisie, a savoir le roman realiste. C'est en effet le caractere raciste et oppressif de la societe d'afrique australe qui explique la position engagee des ecrivains. Cependant on assiste, a des periodes differentes chez nos trois auteurs, a l'abandon du roman realiste au profit de formes romanesques moins traditionnelles. En effet, l'evolution ideologique que connait chacun, elle-meme produite par l'evolution socio-historique, conduit a des changements profonds dans le domaine de l'ecriture. La desagregation du systeme de valeurs auquel chacun se referait, et la fin des certitudes, se traduisent par un recit de type introspectif, ainsi que par une ecriture symbolique et une forme eclateeThis is an examination from a socio-critical point of view of the relationship between political commitment and the narrative form, nemely realist fiction, based on the works of two south african novelists, nadine dordimer and andre brink, and on doris lessing's african-based novels. The committed stance of the writers is explained by the racist and oppressive nature of southern african society. Yet the realist novel, through which they first chose to express their commitment, is slowly discarded in favour of less conventional narrative structures as the coherence of their respective world-views is undermined by a shift in their ideological positions brought about by changes in the socio-political situation
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Kirton, Teneille. "Racial exploitation and double oppression in selected Bessie Head and Doris Lessing texts." Thesis, University of Fort Hare, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10353/232.
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During the era of discrimination and disparity in Southern Africa, racial inequality silenced many black writers. It was the white authors that dominated the literary environment presenting their biased views on social and political concerns; the black authors standpoints were seen as unimportant and they were deemed inferior to the white authors. Consequently, it was particularly difficult for black writers to voice their experiences of living in a society riddled with oppression, prejudice and unequal opportunities. The purpose of this study is to critically compare selected texts by African authors Doris Lessing and Bessie Head, which depict the political and social struggles within Southern African society during the era of unequal opportunities. Lessing and Head’s works present incidents of life experiences in Southern Africa from two contrasting viewpoints. The selected texts explored are: The Grass is Singing and “The Old Chief Mshlanga” by Doris Lessing, a white author, in contrast and comparison to the texts: A Question of Power and “The Collector of Treasures” by Bessie Head, a coloured author. The research for this thesis is conducted from an ethnic literary perspective with careful consideration to critical race theory and cultural studies. From this perspective, the focus of the study is on the struggles that affected both the victim and perpetrator during the apartheid era as well as on the idea that those in power determined what was deemed acceptable and unacceptable, behaviourally and ideologically. Specifically, the plight experienced by the female characters living in a patriarchal society, and the segregation and racial inequality faced by the characters of colour is explored by analysing these characters’ influences, pressures and societal manipulations and constraints in the texts. Thus, this study will provide a more in-depth understanding of Southern African society during the apartheid era and the strategic use of literature to spotlight the subjugation and disparity.
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Mason, Christopher. "The politics of experience : social and political criticism in the novels and non-fiction of Doris Lessing : a cultural study." Grenoble 3, 1993. http://www.theses.fr/1993GRE39044.
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Le but de la thèse est d'étudier l'œuvre d'un écrivain engagé, voire critique, à partir de ses écrits, entretiens et romans. Elle comprend une introduction à l'art de Doris Lessing, suivie de sa biographie. Les chapitres iii à x abordent les grands thèmes évoqués dans ses documents (l'Afrique, l’Angleterre, la littérature, la politique, le féminisme, le pacifisme, la psychologie et les sciences sociales, le soufisme). Le chapitre xi propose une présentation générale des romans de Doris Lessing. Les chapitres xii à xv sont consacrés à une étude détaillée de quatre romans spécifiques (Vaincue par la brousse, Le carnet d'or, La cité promise et La terroriste). Le dernier chapitre est une conclusion succincte. Les documents et romans choisis reflètent les principales préoccupations sociales, politiques et littéraires de Mme Lessing tout au long de sa carrière d'écrivain, soit de 1950 à nos jours. La thèse illustre la position de Doris Lessing envers ses deux patries : la Rhodésie du sud et l’AngleterreThe aim of the thesis is to study the work of a committed, critical writer as revealed in the non-fiction and novels of Doris Lessing. The study begins with an introduction to the art of Doris Lessing, followed by biographical details. Chapters iii - x deal with the major themes in Mrs Lessing's non-fiction (Africa, England, literature, politics, feminism, pacifism, psychology and the social sciences, Sufism). Chapter xi offers a general introduction to the novels of Doris Lessing. Chapters xii-xv are devoted to a detailed study of specific novels (the grass is singing, the golden notebook, the four-gated city and the good terrorist). The final chapter is a succinct conclusion. Non-fiction and novels chosen span the entire breadth of Mrs Lessing's writing career from 1950 to the present day and reflect her major social, political and literary preoccupations throughout this period. The thesis illustrates Doris Lessing's position towards her two homelands, southern Rhodesia and England
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Dooley, Gillian Mary Adele, and gillian dooley@flinders edu au. "Courage and Truthfulness: Ethical Strategies and the Creative Process in the Novels of Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul." Flinders University. English, 2001. http://catalogue.flinders.edu.au./local/adt/public/adt-SFU20050530.150240.
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The novels of Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul are studied in the light of statements they have made in essays and interviews regarding the ethical implications of writing fiction. The purpose of this research is to examine the nature of the problems they have identified in the creative process of writing and the strategies each has used to address the ethical problems they perceive, and to assess the relative success of their chosen methods.
It can be seen that, although for each of them the quest for truth is their highest concern, they have each developed very different ways of dealing with the problems they believe are connected with writing truthfully, and in addition, they have defined the particulars of these problems in different ways. It is concluded that the more carefully examined and individually defined these problems are, the greater the internal consistency and credibility which is achieved by the strategies they have developed to address the problems, and the more their work has developed in the course of their careers.
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Chown, Linda Eileen. "Narrative authority and homeostasis in the novels of Doris Lessing and Carmen Martín Gaite /." New York : Garland publ, 1990. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb35497076j.
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Laviolette, Carole. "The tyranny of coherence /." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26741.
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This thesis introduces a skeletal representation of the "kind" of individual Doris Lessing promotes in her work. Organized around five semantic qualifiers, this analysis explores a number of Lessing's works belonging to several literary categories for evidence of the appearance of the daring, self-aware, public, engaged, and vocal individual. It argues that Lessing, as a humanist, is committed to individual personal actualization but that this is tempered with her personnally held views about what is valuable and enriching human experience. It concludes that as author of fictional tales, autobiographical texts as well as political essays, she designs the path of self-development she considers worthy of mention.
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Watkins, Susan. "Epiphany and feminine subjectivity in the novels of Charlotte Bronte, D.H. Lawrence and Doris Lessing." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1992. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/10266/.
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The purpose of this thesis lies in establishing the importance of moments of epiphany in developing ways of understanding feminine subjectivity in Charlotte Bronte's Villette, D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, and Women in Love, and Doris Lessing's Children of Violence series. The comparisons and contrasts in these texts' treatment of the feminine subject are elaborated. Epiphany's place in different narrative structures is considered, as is the issue of how the implicit gendering of those narrative patterns constructs the feminine subject, sometimes in ways that may conflict with the gender of the characters concerned. The conclusions of the thesis suggest that an understanding of feminine subjectivity in the novels considered is invaluably aided by examining the novels' epiphanies; and elaborate the previously implicit evaluative comparison of the three writers' novels from the perspective outlined below. The critical and theoretical approach of the thesis relies on the combination of a feminist commitment to understand and change patriarchal relations with poststructuralist theories about language and the subject that suggest the importance of language in constructing our ideas. Psychoanalytic models and theories are frequently used as they best address the Issues I. find interesting in these texts. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first Is a history of epiphany's development as a concept from its appearance in the work of Joyce to its use as a critical term. The second deals with epiphany's disruption of established models of feminine subjectivity In Villette. The third discusses the differentiation of feminine and masculine epiphanies and languages in Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow, and that pattern's collapse in Women in Love; and the fourth chapter deals with the various models of the feminine subject in Children of Violence, and considers why they do not productively conflict with, or question each other.
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Chauchix, Cheikrouhou Danièle. "L'écriture des femmes de lettres maghrébines d'expression française en comparaison avec l'écriture africaine de Doris Lessing." Rennes 2, 1985. http://www.theses.fr/1985REN20008.
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Robinson, Sally. "Engendering the subject : gender and self-representation in contemporary women's fiction /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9433.
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Salisbury, Annika. "Martha's Unhomely Quest for the Homely : A Postcolonial Reading of the Protagonist Martha in Doris Lessing's Martha Quest." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur (from 2013), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-70857.
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The protagonist Martha in Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest is born to white British settler parents and grows up in a British colony in southern Africa in the 1930s. Although officially the coloniser rather than the colonised, Martha tries to reject this role mentally, verbally, and physically. This essay aims to show that a postcolonial reading of Martha in relation to the colonial context helps in understanding her double consciousness and, more specifically, her inability to find a real or lasting sense of home. Using Homi Bhabha’s concept of unhomeliness, the essay argues that Martha does not truly feel at home anywhere, because the “unhomely” always disturbs the “homely.” Through close reading of the text, it shows how Martha tries to find a sense of home in four areas of her life: her physical home, nature, her body, and her mind. This essay finds that despite Martha’s efforts in moving from her family home to rented accommodation, from the bush to the city, from girlhood to womanhood, and from her individual thoughts to the solidarity of others, she still does not feel at home anywhere. Whenever she starts to feel comfortable in a place or situation, unhomely moments, such as reminders of her nationality, race, or class, always disturb the homely feelings of belonging. Ultimately, Martha cannot escape her unhomeliness.Huvudpersonen Martha i Doris Lessings Martha Quest är dotter till vita brittiska bosättare och växer upp i en brittisk koloni i södra Afrika på 1930-talet. Trots att hon formellt sett är kolonisatören snarare än den koloniserade, försöker Martha att avvisa denna roll mentalt, verbalt och fysiskt. Denna uppsats syftar till att visa att en postkolonial tolkning av Martha i förhållande till det koloniala sammanhanget bidrar till en förståelse av hennes dubbla medvetande och mer specifikt hennes oförmåga att hitta en verklig, eller bestående, känsla av hemma. Med hjälp av Homi Bhabhas koncept gällande o-hemlikhet argumenterar uppsatsen för att Martha inte känner sig riktigt hemma någonstans, eftersom det ”o-hemlika” alltid stör det ”hemlika.” Genom en noggrann läsning av texten visar den hur Martha försöker hitta känslan av ett hem inom fyra områden av sitt liv: sitt fysiska hem, naturen, sin kropp och sitt sinne. Denna uppsats konstaterar att trots Marthas ansträngningar att flytta från sitt familjehem till ett hyresrum, från land till stad, från ung flicka till kvinna och från sina individuella tankar till solidaritet med andra, känner hon sig fortfarande inte hemma någonstans. När hon börjar känna sig bekväm på ett ställe eller i ett läge, stör o-hemlika ögonblick i form av påminnelser om hennes nationalitet, ras eller klass alltid hennes hemlika känslor av tillhörighet. I slutändan kan Martha inte undgå sin o-hemlikhet.
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Cirstea, Arina-Nicoleta. "Urban imaginaries : mapping space and self in the writing of Doris Lessing, Michèle Roberts and Sara Maitland." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2010. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/35219/.
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This thesis explores representations of urban space in work published between 1962 and 2007 by British writers Doris Lessing, Michèle Roberts and Sara Maitland. I read these texts alongside a body of influential urban literature, with an emphasis on the spatial theory developed by postmodern scholar Fredric Jameson in the late 1980s. I argue that, despite claiming to provide a universally valid description of the contemporary urban experience, the spatial categories proposed by Jameson are inadequate for a reading of women's urban writing. My research turns to an alternative framework, which brings together insights from feminist and non-feminist cultural geography and psychoanalysis. My examination of urban texts by Lessing, Roberts and Maitland highlights a persistent interest in gender categories and their role in shaping the individual experience of the metropolis. In particular, I focus on women's struggle to articulate their identity against Enlightenment definitions of public and private spheres in post-1960 London. A second but equally important concern regards the potential of the city to enhance individuals' engagement with spirituality and to reinforce a sense of community that is rooted in a religious worldview. In view of the fact that questions of gender and spiritual identity are commonly overlooked by both Enlightenment rationalism and postmodern urban theory, my central argument is that women writers' accounts of urban experience undermine the Enlightenment gendering of space, while at the same time challenging the revision of the Enlightenment performed by postmodern scholars. In exploring the ways in which women writers' representation of the metropolis is informed by an engagement with gender and spirituality, my research bridges the gap between explorations of urban space and gender, on the one hand, and gender, community and spirituality, on the other, contributing to an enhanced reading of late-twentieth-century, and early-twenty-first-century, urban imaginaries.
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Murat, Jean-Christophe. "Les métamorphoses de Londres dans l'imaginaire romanesque britannique après 1945 (Angus Wilson, Doris Lessing, J. G. Ballard)." Paris 3, 1993. http://www.theses.fr/1993PA030100.
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Depuis 1945, le roman britannique semble construire un mode de representation urbaine qui situe londres a un point de rencontre entre un passe historique et litteraire constitue par une serie d'antagonismes (la dichotomie chretienne cite terrestre-cite celeste ; la rivalite ville-campagne, qui evolue vers un rapport ville-banlieue-campagne au dix-neuvieme siecle ; le contraste entre le west end et l'east end, a partir de 1860), et un present postmoderne conditionne par des donnees tout a fait nouvelles (traumatisme de la deuxieme guerre mondiale, angoisse de l'ere nucleaire, toute-puissance de la technologie et des mass media). Chez angus wilson, la representation de londres permet a l'auteur d'etablir une correspondance entre les tropismes qui regissent les ideologies et les modes de vie de la societe britannique (l'opposition ville-campagne notamment) et les rapports qui unissent le texte litteraire a ses hypotextes. L'imaginaire de doris lessing s'ancre d'abord dans la representation d'une ville faconnee par l'histoire et les institutions, avant de substituer a la cite reelle une vision apocalyptique et une architecture paradisiaque. L'univers dionysiaque et deregle de j. G. Ballard convoque dans la capitale britannique la fulgurante reunion de deux extremites du temps: les jungles et les deserts prehistoriques sont les modeles inconscients des jungles et des deserts technologiques du londres des annees 60 et 70Since 1945, the british novel has appeared to build a representation of the city that has made london a meeting-point between a historical and literary past, constituted by a series of antagonisms (the christian dichotomy between the earthly city and the celestial city; the town-country opposition, evolving towards a city-suburb-country relationship in the course of the 19th century; the contrast between the west end and the east end, from 1860 onwards), and a postmodern present, shaped by an unprecedented historical juncture (the trauma of world war 2, the anguish of the nuclear age, the alienation of society by technology and the mass media). In angus wilson's work, the representation of london enables the writer to establish a correspondence between the literary text and its subtexts. Doris lessing's london is initially firmly set in history and institutions, before giving way to an apocalyptic vision and to an architecture of paradise. The dionysian universe of j. G. Ballard manifests in london the reunion of the two extremities of time, in which prehistorical jungles and deserts are unconscious archetypes for the technological jungles and deserts of postmodern london
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Epstein, Grace Ann. "Fluid bodies : narrative disruption and layering in the novels of Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood /." The Ohio State University, 1990. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487684245467068.
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Sharpe, Martha. "Autonomy, self-creation, and the woman artist figure in Woolf, Lessing, and Atwood." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26050.
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This thesis traces the self-creation and autonomy of the woman artist figure in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, and Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye. The first chapter conveys the progression of autonomy and self-creation in Western-European philosophy through contemporary thinkers such as Charles Taylor, Robert Pippin, Alexander Nehamas, and Richard Rorty. This narrative culminates in a rift between public and private, resulting from the push--especially by Nietzsche--toward a radical, unmediated independence. Taylor and Rorty envision different ways to resolve the public/private rift, yet neither philosopher distinguishes how this rift has affected women by enclosing them in the private, barring them from the public, and delimiting their autonomy. The second chapter focusses on each woman artist's resistance to socially scripted roles, accompanied by theories about resistance: Woolf with Rachel Blau DuPlessis on narrative resistance, Lessing with Julia Kristeva on dissidence, and Atwood with Stephen Hawking and Kristeva on space-time. The third chapter contrasts the narratives of chapters 1 and 2 and reveals how the woman artist avoids the problematic public/private rift by incorporating the ethics developed within the private into her art; she balances her creative goals with responsibility to others. Drawing on the work of women moral theorists, this thesis suggests that women's self-creation and autonomy result in an undervalued but nevertheless workable solution to the public/private rift.
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Chow, Tsz-ying Connie. "Speaking through madness : women writing madness /." View the Table of Contents & Abstract, 2005. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B31570781.
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Magie, Lynne Adele. "The daemon Eros : Gothic elements in the novels of Emily and Charlotte Brontë, Doris Lessing, and Iris Murdoch /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9448.
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Dooley, Gillian. "Courage and truthfulness ethical strategies and the creative process in the novels of Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul /." Connect to this title online, 2000. http://voyager.flinders.edu.au/local/adt/public/adt-SFU20050530.150240/index.html.
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Price, Jacqueline. "'Born out of war' : the relationship between war and the family in the selected works of Doris Lessing." Thesis, Keele University, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.301160.
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Tinsley, Hettie. "Constructions of women in relation to the politics and ideals of androgyny in some of the works of Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, Joan Barfoot and Angela Carter /." Title page, summary and contents only, 1993. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09ARM/09armt592.pdf.
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Rundgren, Heta. "Vers une théorie du roman postnormâle : féminisme, réalisme et conflit sexuel chez Doris Lessing, Märta Tikkanen, Stieg Larsson et Virginie Despentes." Thesis, Paris 8, 2016. http://www.theses.fr/2016PA080145/document.
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Entre littérature comparée et études de genre, cette thèse vise à théoriser ce que j’appelle le roman postnormâle. A partir d’un corpus constitué d’un ensemble de romans européens contemporains [The Golden Notebook de Doris Lessing (1962), Les Hommes ne peuvent être violés (1975) de Märta Tikkanen, la trilogie Millénium ou Les Hommes qui haïssent les femmes (2005-2007) de Stieg Larsson et Apocalypse bébé (2010) de Virginie Despentes], d’une part, et d’un corpus de textes théoriques, littéraires et féministes, d’autre part, j’analyse la façon dont le roman postnormâle reprend le discours social concernant la différence des sexes pour s’adresser à un large public, tout en déplaçant subtilement les conventions réalistes afin d'inscrire dans l’écriture l’expérience du conflit sexuel du point de vue des femmes, voire des lesbiennes.Je procède en quatre étapes : j’étudie 1) l’ancrage des romans dans un « réel réaliste » et la fonction du détail dans l’esthétique postnormâle ; 2) le sociogramme du ‘féminisme’ dans les romans et leur réception ; 3) le récit de ce que j’appelle le contre-viol ; 4) l’inscription du désir-femme et la figuration, voire la constitution, d’un entr’elles. Ma proposition de théorisation du roman postnormâle s’inscrit dans une perspective postmoderne : elle implique de suspendre, sans toutefois l’ignorer, la double question de la littérarité et de l’évaluation des œuvres, au profit d’une étude de l’objet littéraire en contexte. Enfin, du point de vue de la théorie féministe, ce travail ambitionne de repenser les liens entre les notions de féminin et de queer, à l’aune des théories féministes et lesbiennes contemporainesSituated at the intersection between comparative literature and gender studies, this dissertation theorizes what I term the postnormâle novel. It deploys readings of four contemporary European novels along with a corpus of literary and feminist theory. The novels include Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962), Märta Tikkanen’s Manrape (1975), Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005-2007) and Virginie Despentes’s Apocalypse baby (2010). My analysis of these texts examines the way in which the postnormâle novel reclaims social discourses of sexual difference for a mass audience while subtly displacing realist conventions in order to inscribe women’s—or lesbians’—experience of sexual conflict into the text. A four step process is used to study the work. First, I anchor the novels to a “realist real”, and study the function of detail within the postnormâle aesthetic. Then I chart the sociogram ’feminism’ in the novels and their reception. Thirdly, I read the narrative of what I call “counter-rape”, and lastly the inscription of woman-desire and the figuration—the constitution even—of entr’elles, a feminist space. The perspective of my study is postmodern, which implies a suspension—but not a disbelief—of the twofold question of literary status and literary evaluation, in order to focus on texts in their contexts. In this process, I aim to rethink the link between the notions of the feminine and the queer in light of contemporary feminist and lesbian perspectives
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Ruth, Damian William. "Psychodynamic perspectives on the master-servant relationship and its representation in the work of Doris Lessing, Es'kia Mphahlele and Nadine Gordimer." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/15840.
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Bibliography: pages 206-219.The master-servant relationship in South Africa is examined in the light of Melanie Klein's psychodynamic-theories. It is argued that mechanisms of defense identified by Klein, primarily denial, splitting and projection, as well as depressive guilt, operate in the master-servant relationship in this country. The first chapter clarifies the theoretical approach to i) the individual and society, ii) literature and social analysis and iii) psychoanalysis and literature. It is argued that individuals are at one and the same time both public and private entities, made by and making the society they live in. The notion that group behaviour is individual behaviour writ large is rejected and the way in which the master-servant relationship is used as a microcosm of the larger relationship between black and white in South Africa is explained. It is also argued that literature, not bound to specifics of time and place in the way statistics are, yet still rooted in the looser flow of everyday life as experienced by individuals, provides the social analyst with special access to the dynamics of a society. The value of a psychoanalytic approach to literature lies in the light psychoanalysis sheds on the function of metaphor, particularly the metaphor of the human body, and phantasy. In the explication of Klein's theories, the importance of phantasy, both on an individual and a collective level, is stressed. The way in which denial, projection, splitting and guilt operate in South African society is then examined with illustrations drawn from various sources, such as the media and the statements of politicians, but primarily from the fiction of Doris Lessing, Es'kia Mphahlele and Nadine Gordimer. Furthermore, it is pointed out how patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism can be interpreted in the light of the dynamics proposed by Klein; it is argued that South Africa is a patriarchal, capitalist and colonial society and the effects that this has on the writing of Lessing, Mphahlele and Gordimer are examined. A framework for a reading of Lessing, Mphahlele and Gordimer is then established. Colonial literature, and the literary device of irony are examined. Links are drawn between irony, the metaphor of the body, the rejection of the notion of the purely private individual, and the functioning of denial, splitting and projection. In the subsequent three chapters, each devoted to a single writer, the theme of failures in recognition is carried through. Each writer is studied to emphasize different aspects of the arguments that have been developed in the preceding chapters. The tensions of patriarchy and colonialism are most clearly seen in the work of Lessing. Gordimer subverts the popularly-accepted division between public and private and provides a historical perspective on the master-servant relationship. Mphahlele, like Gordimer, gives us many examples of how a self is fractured and warped in the domination and subordination that obtains in the domestic scene. Like Gordimer, he uses irony a great deal to make his point. These three writers from divergent backgrounds resort to similar techniques and metaphors to express a similar vision. This study interprets the link between the individual and society, and between a society and its literature in terms of a psychodynamic theory. The struggle for a sense of wholeness is an individual and a collective enterprise. The struggle for a South African literature is the struggle for a South African identity.
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Butter, Stella. "Literatur als Medium kultureller Selbstreflexion : literarische Transversalität und Vernunftkritik in englischen und amerikanischen Gegenwartsromanen aus funktionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive /." Trier : WVT Wiss. Verl. Trier, 2007. http://www.wvttrier.de/top/Beschreibungen/ID513.html.
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Elarem, Hajer. "A quest for selfhood : deconstructing and reconstructing female identity in Doris Lessing's early fiction." Thesis, Besançon, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015BESA1026/document.
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Écrivaine prolifique, anticonformiste, rebelle et provocatrice, Doris Lessing est considérée par la critique comme ayant été à l'avant-garde du féminisme, du communisme, de l'anticolonialisme et de la lutte contre l'apartheid. En lui accordant le prix Nobel de littérature en 2007, l'académie suédoise récompensait une « conteuse épique de l'expérience féminine, qui avec scepticisme, ardeur et une force visionnaire, scrute une civilisation divisée ». Cependant, ne retenir de Doris Lessing que des combats politiques d'ordre public, c'est oublier un thème essentiel et omniprésent dans ses écrits, celui de la quête de soi et du désir de connaissance de soi qui anime le sujet féminin. Pour atteindre ce but et au bout du compte se reconstruire, celui-ci passe d'abord par la déconstruction. C'est pourquoi ce travail se propose d'analyser l'approche déconstructionniste de Doris Lessing vis-à-vis de la question de l'identité féminine. Cette déconstruction ne doit pas être comprise au sens strictement derridien du terme, mais dans une perspective plus large qui est celle de la vision universelle et prophétique de l'auteure. En effet, Doris Lessing tente de déconstruire une conception essentialiste qui renverrait à une conception universaliste de l'identité féminine. Elle nie toute pensée logocentrique et remet en cause l'unité et le fixisme identitaire, et partant la généralité de la quête. Ceci révèle le nomadisme d'une pensée qui doit s'entendre, dans le sens deleuzien, comme une conception de l'identité de la femme comme fluide, changeante, sans frontières, ouverte à de nouvelles possibilités et avec un grand potentiel pour se re-désigner et se re-définirA prolific, anti-conformist, rebellious and provocative writer, Doris Lessing has been considered by critics as the forerunner of feminism, communism, anti-colonialism and anti-aparteid. By attributing to her the Nobel Price for Literature in 2007, the Swedish Academy rewarded an « epicist of the female experience, who, with skepticism, fire and visionary power subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny ». Reducing her work, however, to political issues means overlooking a crucial and omnipotent theme related to the quest for selfhood and the desire for self-knowledge animating the female subject, In order to gain this goal, it is first important to go through the experience of deconstruction. This is why this work will analyse Doris Lessing's deconstructive approach to the female identity. This deconstruction is not to be understood in the strict Derridian sense but in a broader persepective residing in the writer's universal and prophetic vision. In fact, Doris Lessing endeavors to deconstruct an essentialist conception which would lead to a universal apprehension of the female identity. She denies all logocentric thinking and questions fixed and unified identities, and by the same token, the universality of the quest. This reveals a nomadic thought, which in Deleuzian sense, entails that the female identity is fluid, changing, without frontiers, open to all possibilities and with a great potential to re-construct and re-define itself
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Visel, Robin Ellen. "White Eve in the "petrified garden" : the colonial African heroine in the writing of Olive Schreiner, Isak Dinesen, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29445.
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Olive Schreiner, writing in the tradition of George Eliot and the Brontës, was an isolated yet original figure who opened up new directions in women's fiction. In her novels, The Story of an African Farm (1883) and From Man to Man (1926) she developed a feminist critique of colonialism that was based on her own coming-of-age as a writer in South Africa. Schreiner's work inspired and influenced Isak Dinesen, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer, who have pursued their visions of the colonial African heroine in changing forms which nevertheless consciously hark back to the "mother novel." Dinesen's Out of Africa (1937), Lessing's Martha Quest (1952) and Gordimer's The Lying Days (1953) are in a sense revisions of Schreiner's Story of an African Farm. These texts, together with later novels by Lessing and Gordimer (such as Shikasta and Burger's Daughter, 1979) and key short stories by the four writers, form a body of writing I call the "African Farm" texts. Written in different colonial countries—South Africa, Kenya and Rhodesia—in response to different historical circumstances, from different ideological and aesthetic stances, the "African Farm" fictions depict the problematic situation of the white African heroine who is alienated both from white colonial society and from black Africa. Through her own rebellion against patriarchal mores as she struggles to define herself as an artistic, intellectual woman in a hostile environment, she uncovers the connections between patriarchy and racism under colonialism. She begins to identify with the black Africans in their oppression and their incipient struggle for independence; however she cannot shed her white inheritance of privilege and guilt. Just as colonial society (the white "African Farm") becomes for her a desert, a cemetery, a false, barren, "petrified garden," so black Africa becomes its idealized counterpart: a fertile realm of harmony and possibility, the true Garden of Eden from which she, as White Eve, is exiled. I trace the "African Farm" theme and imagery through the work of other white Southern African writers, such as J.M. Coetzee, whose stark, poetic, postmodernist
novels can be read as a coda to the realistic fiction of the four women writers. Finally, I look at the post-"African Farm" texts of such transitional writers as Bessie Head, whose novels of black Africa preserve a suggestive link with Schreiner.Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate
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Glover, Jayne Ashleigh. ""A complex and delicate web" : a comparative study of selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy /." [S.l. : s.n.], 2007. http://eprints.ru.ac.za/1001/.
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Sceats, Sarah Anne. "Food and eating in fiction since 1950 with particular reference to the writing of Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Michele Roberts and Alice Thomas Ellis." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 1996. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/1594.
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Eating is a fundamental activity. What people eat, how and with whom, what they feel about food, what they do or do not want to eat and why - even who they eat - are of crucial significance in any reading of human behaviour. In this thesis, I consider the diverse and complex uses of food and eating in fiction since 1950, especially that written by women. I argue both that food and eating carry much of the meaning of a novel or story and that the acts of cooking, feeding and eating depicted are inseparable from issues of power and control: individually, interpersonally, culturally, politically. My discussion centres on the writing of Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Michele Roberts and Alice Thomas Ellis. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, sociology, anthropology, Foucault, Bakhtin and others, the thesis aims to construct an interdisciplinary perspective which both resists reductive interpretations and emphasises the centrality, complexity and diversity of food and eating in literature in our culture. I begin with an examination of the ambiguities of maternal feeding and nurturing, moving on to explore the links between appetite, eating and sexuality. I explore cannibalism and vampirism as manifestations of oppression, but also as indicating insatiable emptiness and transgressive appetite. The body itself is crucial, and my argument considers the paradox of not eating as control/enslavement, also tracing self-starvation as a positive route towards wholeness and connection. The last part of my argument focuses on social eating, examining conventions, rituals and food itself in connection with power relations, and finally considers how we might truly speak of food and eating in the context of society as a whole.
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Glover, Jayne Ashleigh. ""A complex and delicate web" : a comparative study of selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002241.
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This thesis examines selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy. It argues that a specifiable ecological ethic can be traced in their work – an ethic which is explored by them through the tensions between utopian and dystopian discourses. The first part of the thesis begins by theorising the concept of an ecological ethic of respect for the Other through current ecological philosophies, such as those developed by Val Plumwood. Thereafter, it contextualises the novels within the broader field of science fiction, and speculative fiction in particular, arguing that the shift from a critical utopian to a critical dystopian style evinces their changing treatment of this ecological ethic within their work. The remainder of the thesis is divided into two parts, each providing close readings of chosen novels in the light of this argument. Part Two provides a reading of Le Guin’s early Hainish novels, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest and The Dispossessed, followed by an examination of Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The third, and final, part of the thesis consists of individual chapters analysing the later speculative novels of each author. Piercy’s He, She and It, Le Guin’s The Telling, and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake are all scrutinised, as are Lessing’s two recent ‘Ifrik’ novels. This thesis shows, then, that speculative fiction is able to realise through fiction many of the ideals of ecological thinkers. Furthermore, the increasing dystopianism of these novels reflects the greater urgency with which the problem of Othering needs to be addressed in the light of the present global ecological crisis.
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Saunders, Julia E. "The metafictional alchemy of Doris Lessing, the fusion of the rational and the transcendental in her speculative works in the light of reader-response theory." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ48435.pdf.
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Saunders, Julia E. (Julia Elaine) Carleton University Dissertation English. "The Metafictional alchemy of Doris Lessing: the fusion of the rational and the transcendental in her speculative works in the light of reader-response theory." Ottawa, 1999.
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Hunter, Eva Shireen. "A sense of place in selected African works by Doris Lessing read in conjunction with novels of education by contemporary white South African women writers." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8369.
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Bibliography: leaves 211-217.This study provides a more intensive reading of certain works by Doris Lessing set in Southern Africa than has yet been attempted, and reads them,• for the first time, in conjunction with a particular literary lineage within Southern African letters, the novel of education by white women. The works by Lessing chosen for discussion are: two short stories, "The Old Chief Mshlanga" (1951) and "Sunrise on the Veld" (1951), the first two volumes of the Children of Violence series, Martha Quest (1952) and A Proper Marriage (1954), and Lessing's autobiographical account of a return visit to Rhodesia in 1956, Going Home (1957). Those by the other Southern African women writers--all of which, with the exception of Gordimer's The Lying Days have received virtually no critical attention to date--are: Nadine Gordimer's The Lying Days (1953)', Jillian Becker's The Virgins• (1976), Carolyn Slaughter's Dreams of the Kalahari (1981), Lynn Freed's Home Ground (1986), E.M. / MacPhail's Phoebe and Nio (1987), and Menan du Plessis's A State of Fear (1983).