| The study focuses on Doris Lessing's space fiction novels, namely Briefing for a Descent into Hell and the pentalogy Canopus in Argos: Archives. It questions the opinion held by many literary scholars and critics: that Doris Lessing is a 'bad stylist' who cares more for content and ideas than for writing style.*)
In a close reading of the six space fiction novels a number of formal and stylistic devices were analysed (e.g., narrative technique, imagery, rhetorical elements) in order to critically evaluate this view. The findings illustrate that Lessing purposefully employs these and other devices in such a way that central thematic aspects are reflected in each novel on both the formal and stylistic levels.
Choice of contents:
Plot structure
Narrative technique
Characterisation
Structuring of information
Imagery
Puns
Rhetoric
Comic elements
Reader manipulation
in:
Briefing for a Descent into Hell
Canopus in Argos: Archives
- Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta
- The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five
- The Sirian Experiments
- The Making of the Representative for Planet 8
- The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire
*) Added 12th October 2007:
Cf. comments on Lessing's 2007 Nobel Prize win: German literary critic Denis Scheck calls it 'politically, to be welcomed; aesthetically, however, a disaster' ("Ästhetisch dagegen ist es eher eine Pleite", Spiegel Online, 11 October 2007, http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/
literatur/0,1518,510858,00.html). American literary critic Harold Bloom says: "Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable ... fourth-rate science fiction" (Fox News, 11 Oktober 2007, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301073,00.html). As John Mullan, Professor am University College English, aptly points out: "It has usually been the content of Lessing's fiction that has drawn attention. What is less often noticed is her restless experimentation with form and genre" (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/doris_lessing_wins_the_nobel_p.html)
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