Colonial Flâneurs: the London Life-writing of Janet Frame and Doris Lessing

Inside Out ◽  
2008 ◽  
pp. 189-202
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Janet Frame

scholarly journals The Autofictional in Serial, Literary Works

2022 ◽  
pp. 101-118
Author(s):  
Ricarda Menn ◽  
Melissa Schuh
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Life Narratives ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Dorothy Richardson

AbstractThis chapter approaches serial literary autofictions as a distinct variant of autofictional writing. While discussions of life writing often focus on male authors, the chapter redresses this imbalance by considering women writers, specifically the works of Dorothy Richardson, Doris Lessing, and Rachel Cusk. The approach is new in exploring the autofictional in serial, literary works, and tracing connections across an author’s oeuvre. Such a focus leads to an extended understanding of autofiction and the autofictional as challenging autobiographical unity and coherence. The chapter distinguishes between different forms of seriality (including series, serial, and serialized life narratives), and argues that serial publications and structures enhance literary and autofictional tendencies in that they draw attention to the complexities of autobiographical representation.

Speculative Realism and Science Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Willems
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cormac Mccarthy ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Neil Gaiman ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

A human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. One of the ways that speculative realism challenges anthropomorphism is by taking non-human things to be as valid objects of investivation as humans, allowing a more responsible and truthful view of the world to take place. Brian Willems uses a range of science fiction literature that questions anthropomorphism both to develop and challenge this philosophical position. He looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way in which language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene. Willems considers the works of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson are considered alongside some of the main figures of speculative materialism including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett.

The Relationship between Seeker and Spiritual Guide as portrayed in contemporary Western Sufi Autobiographies

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-332
Author(s):  
Kate Zebiri
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

This article aims to explore the Shaykh-mur?d (disciple) or teacher-pupil relationship as portrayed in Western Sufi life writing in recent decades, observing elements of continuity and discontinuity with classical Sufism. Additionally, it traces the influence on the texts of certain developments in religiosity in contemporary Western societies, especially New Age understandings of religious authority. Studying these works will provide an insight into the diversity of expressions of contemporary Sufism, while shedding light on a phenomenon which seems to fly in the face of contemporary social and religious trends which deemphasize external authority and promote the authority of the self or individual autonomy.

Discovering Doris Lessing

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-49
Author(s):  
Md. Mahmudul Hasan
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Sexual Relationships ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Education Literature ◽  
Islamic Perspective ◽  
Literary Reputation ◽  
Islamic Thought

The 2007 Nobel literature laureate Doris Lessing (1919-2013) is one of the twentieth century’s most prolific and versatile British writers. Her literary career is marked by the robustness and diversity of her ideas. The plurality of voices in her work makes room for discovering a very different Lessing from how she is usually construed and for discussing some of her views in a new and somewhat unusual light. In this study, I intend to look at her thoughts on education, literature, racism, and women’s rights and locate possible commonalities between them and certain facets of Islamic thought. As she is considered a humanist, a secular writer of great stature, the “grande dame” of British writing of her time, and handlesexplicit sexual relationships, a sense of remoteness and incomprehension is perhaps palpable in any attempt to discover an “Islamic Doris Lessing.” However, given that she is known for her courage and outspokenness, as well as for making unconventional moves and iconoclastic statements sometimes at the expense of her literary reputation, it will be interesting to see her ideas from an Islamic perspective.

Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Biographies: Research, Results, and Reading, ed. Anders Jarlert. Konferenser, 94. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2017, 245 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 327-327
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Emeritus Professor ◽  
Royal Swedish Academy ◽  
Research Results ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Binghamton University ◽  
Sciences Sociales ◽  
The Middle Ages

The papers combined in this volume were originally presented at a conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in Stockholm, June 11–12, 2015. The explicit purpose of this event and the subsequent volume was to expose the work of Swedish and other scholars on the genre of biographies to an international audience, reflecting on life-writing or ego-documents, emphasizing spiritual autobiographies. According to the brief bios at the end of the book, Robert Swanson, for instance, is Emeritus Professor at Binghamton University; Jean-Mark Ticchi teaches at the Centre d’Etudes en Sciences Sociales du Religieux in Paris; and Enock Bongani Zulu was lecturer at the Lutheran Theological Institute in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The book cover is decorated with an image showing a page in Margery Kempe’s Book from ca. 1440, indicating that the focus might rest on the Middle Ages. This is only very partially the case.

Dissenting Print Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Commercial Publishing

Print culture was expanding rapidly in the eighteenth century. Yet religious literature remained the largest category of printed book and Dissenters were significant contributors to this genre. From 1695 pre-publication censorship disappeared within England so print was an important mechanism through which Dissenting identity was created and sustained. Religious works could be doctrinal, controversial, or practical and it was the latter category that had the largest lay readership. Material related to Scripture, either translated or paraphrased, accounted for much of the printed religious output but life writing and poetry were also influential. Many of the authors were ministerial and male, although the audiences for which they were writing were more varied. While it is easier to trace the uses to which material designed to educate ministers was put, there were also significant examples of Dissenters using print to fashion a wider sense of community, often through the use of non-commercial publishing models.

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