Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

In Margaret Laurence’s Epic Imagination, Paul Comeau argues that
Laurence is truly a writer of epic works, in the sense that the epic
mode tells a story of survival and liberation. He states that
Laurence’s Presbyterian background combined with a later education at
United College in Winnipeg provided her with “the enduring influence
of the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, among others, on her intellectual,
emotional, and spiritual development,” and that these influences
formed the body of images used by Laurence as she crafted her novels.

Comeau charts Laurence’s development as an epic writer in a largely
chronological fashion. Her early writing, which generally comprised
novels set in Africa, were not epics themselves, Comeau contends, but
rather contained epic elements or the seeds of epic possibilities. Her
later works, notably the Manawaka cycle, however, shine clearly as epic
writing relating most closely to Dante’s Commedia.

Comeau’s book is promising, but needs some refinement. When dealing
with each novel, he clearly explains Laurence’s imagery and literary
references, and also defends his allegorical argument with sufficient
strength. There are no major problems with Comeau’s content, and his
writing, though academic, maintains the accessible tone of a
well-written high-school essay. He has, however, written two books in
one—the first, a treatment of Laurence’s symbolic lexicon, and the
second, a claim that Laurence’s Manawaka cycle constitutes a parallel
epic to the Commedia. While these two ideas do interrelate, they would
be more powerful if separated into two works and fleshed out more
thoroughly.