Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination

[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 OFALBERTA PRESSA volume in (cuRRents),a Canadian literature seriesPrinted in Canada$34.95 in CanadaBook design by Kevin Zakwww.uap.ualberta.caComeau, Paul is the author of 'Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780888644510 and ISBN 0888644515.