Margaret Laurence: Critical Reflections

Eugenia Sojka is head of the Canadian Studies Centre in the Institute of
British and American Culture and Literature at the University of
Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland.

In this important and valuable collection of essays edited by David
Staines, a professor of English at the University of Ottawa and general
editor of the New Canadian Library, 12 renowned scholars, critics, and
writers offer various perspectives on Margaret Laurence’s life,
writing, and impact on Canadian literary and cultural discourse.

John Lennox examines five decades of Laurence’s correspondence with
Adele Wiseman and Al Purdy. Christl Verduyn offers a comparative study
of selected work by Margaret Laurence and Marian Engel. Helen M. Buss
discerns in the autobiographical texts The Prophet’s Camel Bell and
Dance on the Earth: A Memoir Laurence’s emergence as a feminist and
postcolonial critic. In a departure from the usual focus on villages and
small towns as Laurence’s characteristic fictional landscapes, W.H.
New examines how the city in Laurence’s texts functions as “both a
social strategy and an ethical proposition.” Birk Sproxton looks at
the figure of the unknown soldier as multiple and transtextual, while
Nora Forster Stovel considers Laurence’s metafictional strategies of
writing. Janet Lunn discusses Laurence’s writing for children.

The final section of the book is devoted to analyses, recollections,
and reappraisals by such distinguished Canadian writers as Kristjana
Gunnars, Robert Kroetsch, Aritha Van Herk, and Joyce Marshall. Lois
Wilson contributes “Faith and the Vocation of the Author.”

This collection of essays is essential reading for students and lovers
of Laurence’s work.