74 research outputs found
Writing for Balance: A Conversation with Doris Lessing
Earl G. Ingersoll has edited a collection of interviews with Doris Lessing, which OR Press will be publishing this spring. He teaches at SUNY College in Brockport, New York. Doris Lessing has published over 30 books, most recently African Laughter and The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches, both from HarperCollins 1992. She lives in London
A Young Girl Reading: Martha’s Quest through Literature and Realism in Martha Quest
This paper examines the young heroine’s ambivalent relationship with books in Doris Lessing’s coming-of-age novel Martha Quest. Martha, a young British girl growing up in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the wake of World War II, is a voracious young reader who reads extensively in order to make sense of the world in which she is living. Sometimes the books she reads lead her to think critically and challenge the canonical authorities and patriarchal society; however, at times her reading experience is also unsettling and frustrating because the books she reads are mostly produced within a biased system she intends to go beyond. The paper analyzes how Martha relies on books to reshape her national identity and personal life, and how she deals with the discrepancy between the world represented in books and reality in terms of Benedict Anderson’s concept of an ‘imagined community’. Furthermore, this paper also discusses how Martha’s portrait as a bewildered reader of realist literature mirrors Lessing’s own ambiguous relationship with her realist narratives
On the notion of home and the goals of palliative care
The notion of home is well known from our everyday experience, and plays a crucial role in all kinds of narratives about human life, but is hardly ever systematically dealt with in the philosophy of medicine and health care. This paper is based upon the intuitively positive connotation of the term “home.” By metaphorically describing the goal of palliative care as “the patient’s coming home,” it wants to contribute to a medical humanities approach of medicine. It is argued that this metaphor can enrich our understanding of the goals of palliative care and its proper objectives. Four interpretations of “home” and “coming home” are explored: (1) one’s own house or homelike environment, (2) one’s own body, (3) the psychosocial environment, and (4) the spiritual dimension, in particular, the origin of human existence. Thinking in terms of coming home implies a normative point of view. It represents central human values and refers not only to the medical-technical and care aspects of health care, but also to the moral context
Interview
This interview took place on 23 June 1980 at Doris Lessing\u27s London home. The interviewer is Michael Thorpe. I would like to thank the British Council and Yolande Cantil. in particular for permission to print this excerpt from the interview
Citation de Doris Lessing : Un homme et deux femmes, Plon
Lessing Doris. Citation de Doris Lessing : Un homme et deux femmes, Plon. In: Sorcières : les femmes vivent, n°24, 1982. Mythes et nostalgies. p. 33
Citation de Doris Lessing : Un homme et deux femmes, Plon
Lessing Doris. Citation de Doris Lessing : Un homme et deux femmes, Plon. In: Sorcières : les femmes vivent, n°24, 1982. Mythes et nostalgies. p. 33
- …