The Landscape as a Place of Entrapment and Liberation in Margaret Laurence's Manawaka Cycle
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In her Manawaka cycle, Margaret Laurence created a vivid literary landscape, a microcosm of Canadian Prairie society in its unity and diversity. Through a comparative analysis of The Stone Angel (1964), A Bird in the House (1970), and The Diviners (1974), the paper explores how Laurence, by interweaving the region’s mythological past into the protagonists’ journeys towards independence and dignity, draws a parallel between the quest for personal and national identity. The paper builds on the work of Laura K. Davis and argues further that Laurence not only participated in establishing Canadian national narratives but that she also played a crucial role in shaping them by telling the stories of Pioneers and settlers alongside those of the Métis as representatives of the marginalized Aboriginal population and bearers of their cultural heritage. Laurence challenges the Pioneer myths of conquering the landscape and sees the landscape as a means of transformation, a place where her heroines come “not to hide but to seek“ and repeatedly venture into their unconscious psychic landscapes to explore their inner Selves and search for their autonomous identities. Although the Prairie fiction of the 1960s and 1970s was dominated by a regionalist perspective, the paper demonstrates that with gender, class, and ethnicity in the spotlight, this perception of the region has shifted from the notions of physical landscape towards the individual people inhabiting that particular region and their inner landscapes. |
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