Synopses & Reviews
Though Doris Lessing never explicitly refers to spirituality in her works, she nonetheless explores spiritual issues throughout her texts. This book examines the prominence of spirituality in her writings. The volume provides both close readings of individual works and sweeping surveys of her nearly fifty year career. The contributors employ a variety of theoretical perspectives such as systems theory, feminist studies of the body and of androgyny, postcolonial theories, mythic prophecy, and intersubjective psychology. The contributors reveal that Lessing's presentation of spirituality is neither rigid nor orthodox either the product of the split between the body and the soul nor anchored in formal systems of the past or present.
Review
A book of obvious interest to Lessing students, other readers familiar with Lessing, and graduate library collections.SFRA Review
Synopsis
Considers the importance of spirituality as a concern in Doris Lessing's writings.
Synopsis
Considers the importance of spirituality as a conc
About the Author
PHYLLIS STERNBERG PERRAKIS is a part-time Professor of English at the University of Ottawa and is president of the Doris Lessing Society.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Seeing Differently:"The Spiritual Immersed within the Everyday"
Ages of Anxiety: The Diaries of Jane Somers by Virginia Tiger
Pursuing Difference in The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five by Earl G. Ingersol
Approaching the Apocalypse: Individual and Cultural Collapse and the Seeds of New Vision
Androgyny or Catastrophe: Doris Lessing's Vision in the Early 1970s by Nancy Topping Bazin
Cabalistic Gardens: Lessing's Memoirs of a Surviror by Debrah Raschke
White Settlers in the Heart of Empire: Visionary Power in Lessing's The Four-Gated City by Cherry Clayton
Doris Lessing's Prophetic Voice in Shikasta: Cassandra or Sibyl? by Jeannette Webber
Beyond the Binary:"It Isn't Either or...It's and, and, and, and, and, and"
The Whirlpool and the Fountain: Inner Growth and Love, Again by Phyllis Sternberg Perrakis
"A Question of Wholes": Spiritual Intersecting, Universal Re-Vision in the Work of Doris Lessing by Melanie Hunter and Darby McIntosh
Considering the Stars: The Expanding Universe of Doris Lessing's Work by Josna E. Rege
Works Cited
Index