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Title: |
Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination |
Search Result:
| By (author): |
Paul Comeau |
| ISBN10-13: |
0888644515 : 9780888644510 |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Size: |
228x152x12mm |
| Pages: |
208 |
| Weight: |
.326 Kg. |
| Published: |
University of Alberta Press - December 2005 |
| List Price: |
29.99 Pounds Sterling |
| Availability: |
In Stock
Qty Available: 2 |
| Subjects: |
Literary studies: from c 1900 - |
| [Front flap] Since her death in 1987, Margaret Laurence has remained a commanding force in Canadian literature. The Stone Angel and The Diviners rank most highly among her works for their portrayal of heroic female characters struggling to find a sense of place, and identity, in an often hostile world. In this comprehensive study of Laurence's work, Paul Comeau argues that such heroism springs from Laurence's abiding perception of the epic dimension in everyday life. Paul Comeau traces the development of Margaret Laurence's voice from its tentative beginnings in her African fiction to its culmination in the Manawaka Cycle. He explains how Margaret Laurence instinctively turned to the epic mode to create archetypal narratives of loss, exile, and redemption. Drawing on the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton, Laurence deeply absorbed the epic structure and recast it, populated with the characters of Hagar Shipley, Rachel Cameron, Stacey MacAindra, and Morag Gunn. According to Paul Comeau, it was Laurence's powerful ability to illustrate the epic dimension in her characters that has ensured her a lasting place among great Canadian writers. [Back cover] For Margaret Laurence, the epic aspect of her fiction concerns the fundamental human condition. The epic heroism found in Margaret Laurence is not the grandeur of larger-than-life sagas but a heroism that is simply life itself-the ongoing struggle of character, striving in victory and defeat. In Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination, author Paul Comeau comprehensively explains how Margaret Laurence instinctively turned to the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton for models of the epic mode, which she employed in her own fiction. Anyone who writes in the English Language is in some way an inheritor of Shakespeare and Milton..Our task is not to reject the past but to assimilate it, to take the language and make it truly our own familiar idiom and out of our deepest observations of our people and our place of belonging on this planet. -MARGARET LAURENCE from "Ivory Tower" I have therefore interpreted the Manawaka novels as a "Comedy of the Soul," elaborating on The Stone Angel as a vision of hell, A Jest of God and The Fire-Dwellers together as a perspective on purgatory, and The Diviners as an attempt to mitigate the burden of paradise lost, thus forging whatever redemption may be possible in the postmodern world. -PAUL COMEAU from the "Introduction" [Back flap] Paul Comeau was born and raised in British Columbia. He received his BA and MA from Simon Fraser University before entering the teaching profession. He is currently the Department Head of English at Windermere Secondary School in Vancouver. Front cover image: Margaret Laurence by Simon Brett, 1994. Wood block print, 7 X 10 cm. Used by permission of the artist. THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA PRESS A volume in (cuRRents), a Canadian literature series Printed in Canada $34.95 in Canada Book design by Kevin Zak www.uap.ualberta.ca |
| Reviews: |
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"Comeau demolishes the view that Laurence lacked an interesting mind; and makes a strong case for the coherence and continuity of her imaginative, spiritual, stylistic and formal development as a writer. With this interpretation, Comeau makes an important contribution to understanding this major Canadian novelist. Summing Up: Recommended." D.R. McCarthy, Choice, Vol. 44, No. 1, September 2006.
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"[Margaret Laurence's Epic imagination evokes] in masterful fashion both the authority and the largesse of its subject. In this study, Paul Comeau, known for his essays on Willa Cather and several mid-century Canadian authors, traces the steady development of an epic voice in Laurence's work..For twenty years Laurence criticism has consisted of collections of essays on specialized topics; with its sustained original vision and comprehensive reading of all the author's works, this book brings new energy to Laurence studies, and confirms again her status as one of Canada's classic writers." David Stouck, Great Plains Quarterly, Fall 2006.
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"The prime joy of Comeau's critique is that, in his close reading, and placing it within the context of the 'oeuvre,' he points out that the skeleton is the same as that of the other great epics of western civilization, especially the Christian epics and the 'loser' epics of the dispossessed wandering in search of a new home. Comeau focuses on the imagery, the symbolism, the allusions, stressing the writer's absolute control. He makes readers more aware of how Laurence's choices of language, evocation, and action inform her themes." J.M. Bridgeman, Prairie Fire Review of Books, www.prairiefire.ca/reviews/comeau_laurence.html
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"For Margaret Laurence, the epic aspect of her fiction concerns the fundamental human condition. The epic heroism found in Margaret Laurence¹s work is not the grandeur of larger-than-life sagas but a heroism that is simply life itself the ongoing struggle of character, striving in victory and defeat. Since her death in 1987, Laurence has remained a commanding force in Canadian literature. The Stone Angel and The Diviners rank most highly among her works for their portrayal of heroic female characters struggling to find a sense of place, and identity, in an often hostile world. In Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination, Paul Comeau argues that such heroism springs from Laurence's abiding perception of the epic dimension in everyday life. In Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination, author Comeau comprehensively explains how Laurence instinctively turned to the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton for models of the epic mode, which she employed in her own fiction. Comeau traces the development of Laurence's voice from its tentative beginnings in her African fiction to its culmination in the Manawaka Cycle." SirReadaLot (Full review at http://sirreadalot.org/reviews/0083.htm#Comeau)"
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"[Paul Comeau] is particularly well attuned to Laurence's sensibility; indeed, he often seems to breathe with her as he works scrupulously through her works, in effect doing for her what she does for her characters. Just as she orchestrates their disrupted lives into meaningful patterns, so he arranges her varied writing according to the controlling design of a Christian epic, which offers 'a coherent artistic vision, a Commedia dell'Anima of epic depth and proportion.'" Jon Kertzer, University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 1, Winter 2007
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"Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination by Paul Comeau is the latest in a number of books that have appeared on Margaret Laurence in the last several years, and it forms a valuable addition. ... His comparisons of Laurence's texts to Dante's are frequently insightful and occasionally ingenious. ... Clearly, Laurence's creation of a Canadian epic has inspired Comeau to compose an illuminating study that provides compelling reading for any student, scholar, or admirer of Laurence's writing." Nora Foster Stovel, Canadian Literature 197, Summer 2008.
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