Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2005
Abstract
Writing Grief promises two departures in Laurence criticism: a study of the literary output in the context of the author's life, and a theoretically informed work on the psychology of grief. In his introduction the author asserts that mourning is pervasive in Margaret Laurence's work and that "her personal life was deeply informed by her first hand experience of death"; he then proposes that "for Laurence, this work of mourning involved writing texts that explored autobiographical materials." One expects, therefore, an exploration of fictional texts informed at each turn by biographical and autobiographical materials, an innovation in Laurence study that would be led by what now seems a logical progression in Laurence's work - from fiction based far from her prairie roots, through the Manawaka home ground fictions, to what Laurence herself called her "spiritual" autobiography, The Diviners, and the memoir of her last years, Dance on the Earth - to show the effect of "her first hand experience" on her art, and perhaps even the effect of her art on her own work of mourning.
Comments
Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 25:3 (Summer 2005). Copyright © 2005 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.