The Narratee as Confessor in Margaret Laurence's The Fire‐Dwellers
Margaret Laurence's Manawaka novels represent the consciousness of an anguished confessor who perceives herself to be alone in the world. In a sustained, retrospective account of a critical period in the protagonist's life, Laurence draws upon a Western literary tradition of confession tha...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2003
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| In: |
Literature and theology
Year: 2003, Volume: 17, Issue: 2, Pages: 113-126 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Margaret Laurence's Manawaka novels represent the consciousness of an anguished confessor who perceives herself to be alone in the world. In a sustained, retrospective account of a critical period in the protagonist's life, Laurence draws upon a Western literary tradition of confession that extends to Saint Augustine of Hippo. In The Fire‐Dwellers, Stacey MacAindra is a woman in Vancouver of the 1960s, a markedly different socio‐historical context. Despite the lack of a strictly theological framework for Stacey's self‐examination, the narrative dramatises a spiritual exercise of laying open the memory in order to awaken self‐perception. The novel is structured by a series of narratees, including Stacey herself, several character‐narratees, and the superaddressee God, who serve as confessors to move the protagonist from isolation to engagement and self‐perception in a gendered confession. An analysis of the narratees reveals Laurence's use of the confessional genre in a polyphonic novel to explore female subjectivity and to construct a narrative of female self‐transformation. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4623 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Literature and theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/litthe/17.2.113 |