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 66
... pain at identification with Shikasta's loss of spiritual attunement , Johor is able to distance himself enough to appreciate both their pain and their courage in coping . We do not fully appreciate how much Johor has evolved in his ...
... pain at identification with Shikasta's loss of spiritual attunement , Johor is able to distance himself enough to appreciate both their pain and their courage in coping . We do not fully appreciate how much Johor has evolved in his ...
Page 126
... pain " ( 444-45 ) . Yet Atwood's aging female characters are often those who have not yet learned how to disengage themselves from pain ; they undergo late - life quests into the past to encounter the anguish that has inhibited their ...
... pain " ( 444-45 ) . Yet Atwood's aging female characters are often those who have not yet learned how to disengage themselves from pain ; they undergo late - life quests into the past to encounter the anguish that has inhibited their ...
Page 271
... pain of the individual , perpetuating the sense that , in the face of collective histori- cal trauma , " personal despair c [ an ] never be desperate enough ” ( 20 ) . But as Roy's novel indicates , it is the recognition of personal ...
... pain of the individual , perpetuating the sense that , in the face of collective histori- cal trauma , " personal despair c [ an ] never be desperate enough ” ( 20 ) . But as Roy's novel indicates , it is the recognition of personal ...
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