Adventures of the Spirit: The Older Woman in the Works of Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and Other Contemporary Women WritersPhyllis Sternberg Perrakis In Adventures of the Spirit, Phyllis Sternberg Perrakis brings together eleven American and Canadian "literary gerontologists" to examine a new kind of adventure for the older woman in literature. This volume of critical essays analyzes recent works by contemporary women writers whose characters' midlife and later life changes are mapped in their narratives.Rather than focusing on the painful losses undergone by women of a certain age, recent narratives explore a new kind of adventure of aging, one that is spiritual in nature, enabling new ways of being and becoming, but open-ended and capable of great variation in practice. In particular, these journeys of the spirit focus on the retrospective movement undergone by a midlife or older woman as she is led by inner or outer forces to assess where she has come from and decipher a shape or pattern to her journey.These journeys do not leave the body behind as they map new spiritual territory. Rather they honor spirit's embrace of the natural world and relationships as well as its aspirations for evolving development and eternal existence. The essays in Adventures of the Spirit employ a wide variety of critical lenses to chart these adventures, including archetypal, Sufi, post-colonial, and feminist analysis; archival research; aboriginal life writing; and trauma theory. These studies bring a new understanding to women's adventure of age in both literary texts and in life. |
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Page 128
... Iris bears a marked resemblance to some of the more unflatter- ing depictions of Guinevere from the Arthurian legends . As Atwood makes reference to Tennyson's Idylls of the King , Iris is associated with the deceitful and adulterous ...
... Iris bears a marked resemblance to some of the more unflatter- ing depictions of Guinevere from the Arthurian legends . As Atwood makes reference to Tennyson's Idylls of the King , Iris is associated with the deceitful and adulterous ...
Page 130
... Iris's authority . That is , although Iris attempts to manipulate her text to elicit sympathy from the readers , the readers find they must resist the perhaps natural tendency to identify with the narrator . Iris's bid for absolution ...
... Iris's authority . That is , although Iris attempts to manipulate her text to elicit sympathy from the readers , the readers find they must resist the perhaps natural tendency to identify with the narrator . Iris's bid for absolution ...
Page 134
... Iris and Laura are doubles or mirrored images of each other , Iris measures who she is by what is lacking in Laura . If Laura is " good , ” then she is evil . But Iris has a way of making " goodness " seem eccen- tric or false : " Don't ...
... Iris and Laura are doubles or mirrored images of each other , Iris measures who she is by what is lacking in Laura . If Laura is " good , ” then she is evil . But Iris has a way of making " goodness " seem eccen- tric or false : " Don't ...
Contents
Spiritual Adventuring by Other Contemporary Women Writers | 17 |
The Surfacing of Buried Grief in Doris Lessings | 27 |
Navigating the Spiritual Cycle in Memoirs of a Survivor and Shikasta | 47 |
Copyright | |
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abuse adventure Alias Grace attunement Avey Johnson Bahá'u'lláh become beginning Blind Assassin body Candida Canopean Canopus chapter characters Charis Charis's child childhood contemporary crone cultural death detachment Divine Secrets Doris Lessing Doris Lessing's essay experience Fahim Felicity Felicity's female fiction goddess Handmaid's Tale human Ibn Arabi imagined inner Iris Iris's Johor Kerewin Keri Hulme Laura Little Altars Everywhere lives luminous face Mala Mala's Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood's Martha Quest Medusa Memoirs memories midlife mirror Mootoo mother myth mythic narrative narrator novel Oryx and Crake outer pain past Perrakis Phyllis Sternberg poem Praisesong protagonist Psyche psychic Rachel readers retrospective Robber Bride sense Seven Sisters sexual Shikasta Sidda Sidney Sidney's soul spiritual journey story storytelling Sufi suggests Survivor symbolic tale tion Tony Tony's traditional transformation trauma Tyler understanding victim vision Vivi Wilber woman words writing Ya-Ya York Yukon Zenia Zone