In Pursuit of Doris Lessing: Nine Nations Reading

173 Pages·1990·17.362 MB·English

by  Claire Sprague (eds.)

IN PURSUIT OF DORIS LESSING
Also by Claire Sprague
REREADING DORIS LESSING: Narrative Strategies of Doubling
and Repetition
CRITICAL ESSAYS ON DORIS LESSING (co-editor)
VIRGINIA WOOLF (editor)
VAN WYCK BROOKS: The Early Years
EDGAR SALTUS
HAMLET: Enter Critic (co-editor)
In Pursuit of
Doris Lessing
Nine Nations Reading
Edited by
CLAIRE SPRAGUE
Visiting Professor of English, New York University,
and Professor Emeritus of Brooklyn College,
The City University of New York
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20756-5 ISBN 978-1-349-20754-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20754-1
©The Macmillan Press Ltd 1990
Editorial matter and selection © Claire Sprague 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-49292-5
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-0-312-04713-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
In pursuit of Doris Lessing: nine nations reading I
edited by Claire Sprague.
p. em.
ISBN 978-0-312-04713-9
1. Lessing, Doris, 1919- -Criticism and interpretation.
1. Sprague, Claire.
PR6023.E833Z7 1990
823'.91~c20
90-8106
CIP
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on the Contributors viii
Introduction-Doris Lessing: 'In the World, But Not of It'
Claire Sprague 1
1 Reading Doris Lessing's Rhodesian Stories in Zimbabwe
Anthony Chennells 17
2 The Quest and the Quotidian: Doris Lessing in South
Africa
Eve Bertelsen 41
3 Doris Lessing in Pursuit of the English, or, No Small,
Personal Voice
Clare Hanson 61
4 From Supermarket to Schoolroom: Doris Lessing in the
United States
Ellen Cronan Rose 74
5 Cultures of Occupation and the Canadian [Con]Script-
[ion]: 'Lessing Changed My Life'
Virginia Tiger 89
6 Doris through the French Looking-Glass
Nicole Ward Jouve 102
7 The German Doris Lessing: A Mixed [B]Lessing
Mona Knapp 113
8 Doris Lessing in the Mi[d]st[s] of Ideology: The Spanish
Reading
Fernando Galvan Reula 128
v
vi Contents
9 A Case of Chronic Anachronisms: Doris Lessing and
the USSR
Lorna M. Peterson 142
Index 158
Acknowledgements
All of us who have written about Doris Lessing have learned
from one another. My thanks to that exceptionally collaborative
community.
For this volume I wish to thank all of the contributors and
especially Lorna Peterson, Virginia Tiger, and Ellen Cronan Rose
for their help in various phases of its preparation - finding the
right title, reading my introduction, and talking through the usual
minor and major aches that accompany the making of a book.
As always, my son Jesse participates in my work in ways both
mysterious and self-evident. In the choice of the cover photograph,
his eye was truer than mine.
My very special thanks to Dee Seligman who first used that
perfect title, 'In Pursuit of Doris Lessing', in print and who has
graciously permitted me to use it again for this volume.
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Eve Bertelsen, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town,
completed her doctorate at the University of London. She has
edited Doris Lessing, no. 5 in the Southern Africa Literature Series
(Johannesburg, 1985) and also written a book on Charles Dickens
as well as articles on Lessing, D. H. Lawrence and other writers.
In her appearances in the South African press and over South
African television, she has talked about women, advertising and
African literature.
Anthony Chennells was born in Zimbabwe and has lectured for
many years in the Department of English at the University of
Zimbabwe. He has made a comprehensive study of Southern
Rhodesian settler novels and has published on these and other
aspects of Southern African writing.
Fernando Galvan Reula is Lecturer in English Literature at the
University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain). His latest publications
include an edition and translation of Graham Greene's The Quiet
American (Madrid, 1987) and Formas nuevas en la ficci6n britanica
contemporanea: David Lodge, Ian McEwan y Salman Rushdie (La
Laguna, 1988). The November 1988 issue of the Revista Canaria de
Estudios Ingleses, of which he is the editor, is dedicated to recent
British fiction.
Clare Hanson is Senior Lecturer in English at the College of St
Paul and StMary, Cheltenham. She has worked on the short story
and on Katherine Mansfield. Her books include Short Stories and
Short Fictions, 1880-1980 and The Critical Writings of Katherine
Mansfield. She has published on a variety of women writers and
on feminist theory and is currently preparing a book on Virginia
Woolf for the Macmillan Women Writers Series.
Nicole Ward Jouve is French and now lives in England. She has
written fiction (Shades of Grey), criticism in English (Colette and
Baudelaire), essays on Lessing, Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia
Woolf, and a study of a mass murderer ('The Streetcleaner': The
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Yorkshire Ripper Case on Trial). She is Professor of English and
Related Literatures and Women's Studies at York University.
Mona Knapp has a PhD in German literature and is the author of
Doris Lessing (New York, 1984), and of monographs and articles
on modern German and Commonwealth literature, as well as
textbooks and reviews. She currently teaches German at a private
school and is the associate editor of the Doris Lessing Newsletter.
Lorna M. Peterson is associate coordinator of Five Colleges,
Incorporated (Amherst, Mass.) about which she has written a brief
history, Glancing Backward: Twenty Five Years of Cooperation (1984).
She has taught courses on contemporary women's fiction and
women in Russian literature. She holds a PhD in Slavic Languages
and Literature from Yale University.
Ellen Cronan Rose teaches English and Women's Studies at Drexel
University. A former president of the Doris Lessing Society, she
has published The Tree Outside the Window: Doris Lessing's 'Children
of Violence' and articles on Lessing. With Carey Kaplan, she has
edited Doris Lessing: The Alchemy of Survival and Approaches to
Teaching Lessing's 'The Golden Notebook'.
Claire Sprague is a Professor Emeritus of Brooklyn College, CUNY,
and a Visiting Professor at New York University. Her most recent
book is Rereading Doris Lessing: Narrative Strategies of Doubling and
Repetition (1987). She has served as president of the Doris Lessing
Society (1980-2) and editor of the Doris Lessing Newsletter (1982-8).
Her other published work includes Critical Essays on Doris Lessing·
(co-editor), Virginia Woolf (editor), and books and articles about
various American writers. She is currently general editor of G. K.
Hall's series on the impact of feminist theory on the arts and
sciences.
Virginia Tiger is a Professor of English at Rutgers University
(Newark) where she directs the Graduate English Program. She
has written articles and reviews about contemporary British and
American literature. Her books include William Golding: The Dark
Fields of Discovery and Everywoman. She is also the co-editor of
Critical Essays on Doris Lessing and a frequent contributor to the
Doris Lessing Newsletter.