The Long Way to Emancipation in Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God
Abstract Lauren Berlant’s critical stance proves instrumental to carry out the analysis of Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God, a story dealing with personal insecurities and crises, related to feelings of loss, trauma, suffering or failure. There is no doubt that Rachel, the protagonist and first-person narrator, encompasses all the trappings around the notion of “cruel optimism,” and the novel can be considered as a drama of adjustment, where the fantasies of the “good life” are interweaved with the suffocation of ordinary life. Rachel will have to dismantle the view that by being both a good citizen and a loving daughter she may achieve happiness or, at least, peace of mind. This story of personal struggle and emancipation can be eventually related to the political circumstances in Canada’s long process towards autonomy and independence.
- Referencias
- Cómo citar
- Del mismo autor
- Métricas
Aarons, Haydn, and Juliet Pietsch. Australia: Identity, Fear and Governance in the 21st Century. ANU P, 2012.
Ahmed, Sarah. The Promise of Happiness. Duke UP, 2010.
Anderson, Ben, et al. “Encountering Berlant part two: Cruel and other optimisms.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 189, no. 1, 2023, pp. 143-60.
Atwood, Margaret. Afterword. A Jest of God, by Margaret Laurence, U of Chicago P, 1993, pp. 211-15.
—. Strange Things. The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. Virago, 2004.
Barber, Michael, and John B. Holbein. “400 million voting records show profound racial and geographic disparities in voter turnout in the United States.” Plos One, vol. 17, no. 6, 2022. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268134.
Berlant, Lauren, editor. Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion. Routledge, 2004.
—. Cruel Optimism. Duke UP, 2011.
—. “Feminism and the Institutions of Intimacy.” The Politics of Research, edited by E. Ann Kaplan and George Levine, Rutgers UP, 1997, pp. 143-61.
Bissoondath, Neil. Selling Illusions. The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada. Penguin, 2002.
Brandt, Di. “(Grand)mothering ‘Children of the Apocalypse’: A Post-postmodern Ecopoetic Reading of Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners.” Maternal Texts. Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literatures, edited by Elizabeth Podnieks and Andrea O’Reilly, Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2010, pp 253-69.
Brown, DeNeen. “Prairie Towns Die Slowly in Canada.” The Washington Post, 25 Oct. 2003, https://shorturl.at/ijEL7. Accessed 15 Nov. 2023.
Cameron, Donald, editor. Conversations with Canadian Novelists. Macmillan of Canada, 1973.
Carlyle, William J. “Rural Population Change on the Canadian Prairies.” Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences, vol. 4, no. 1, 1994, pp 65-87.
Coger, Greta M. K. “Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka: A Canadian Yoknapatawpha.” Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence, edited by Colin Nicholson, MacMillan, 1980, pp. 228-46.
Devereux, Cecily. “New Woman, New World: Maternal Feminism and the New Imperialism in the White Settler Colonies.” Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 22, no. 2, 1999, pp. 175-84.
Dvorak, Marta. “Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature, edited by Eva Marie Kröller, Cambridge UP, 2004, pp. 155-76.
Frye, Northrop. “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada.” The Bush Garden. Essays on the Canadian Imagination, edited by Northrop Frye, Anansi, 1995, pp. 213-51.
Harlow, Robert. “Lack of distance.” Review of A Jest of God, by Margaret Laurence. Margaret Laurence. Critical Views on Canadian Writers, edited by W. H. New, McGraw, 1977, pp. 189-91.
Heiland, Donna. Gothic and Gender. Blackwell, 2004.
Howells, Coral Ann. Contemporary Canadian Women’s Fiction. Palgrave, 2003.
—. Margaret Atwood. Macmillan, 1996.
Hughes, Kenneth. “Politics and A Jest of God.” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 13, no. 3, 1978, pp. 40-54.
Hutcheon, Linda. “Atwood and Laurence: Poet and Novelist.” Studies in Canadian Literature/ Ëtudes en literature Canadienne, vol. 3, no. 2, 1978, pp. 255-63.
Johnston, Richard, et al. “National Identity and Support for the Welfare State.” Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol. 43, no. 2, 2010, pp. 349–77.
Kreisel, Henry. “The Prairie: A State of the Mind.” Canadian Anthology, edited by Carl F. Klinck and Reginald E. Watters, Gage Educational Pub., 1974, pp. 620-27.
Kroetsch, Robert. “Fear of Women in Prairie Fiction: An Erotics of Space.” Crossing Frontiers, edited by Dick Harrison, U of Alberta P, 1979, pp. 73-83.
Laurence, Margaret. A Jest of God. 1966. McClelland & Stewart, 1988.
—. “Gadgetry or Growing? Form and Voice in the Novel.” Journal of Canadian Fiction, vol. 27, 1980, pp. 54-62.
—. “Ivory Tower or Grassroots?: The Novelist as a Socio-Political Being.” A Political Art, edited by William H. New, U of British Columbia P, 1987, pp. 15-25.
—. “Margaret Laurence. How to Make Contact with Other People.” YouTube, uploaded by One Show One, 3 Nov. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70LXW40mD0o.
—. “Ten Years’ Sentences.” Margaret Laurence. Critical Views on Canadian Writers, edited by W. H. New, McGraw, 1977, pp. 17-23.
—. “The Loons.” A Bird in the House. Seal Books, 1978.
Lecker, Robert. Margaret Laurence. Twayne Pub., 1981.
Mackey, Eva. The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada. U of Toronto P, 2002.
Oliver, Stephanie, and Kit Dobson. “Everything Is Awful? Ecology and Affect in Literatures in Canada.” Canada & Beyond, vol. 12, 2023, pp. 9-22.
Petrone, Penny. Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present. Oxford UP, 1990.
Pinder, Kait. “Margaret Laurence’s Living-Room War: Bringing Violence Home in the Fire Dwellers.” American Review of Canadian Studies, vol. 52, no. 4, 2022, pp. 402-21.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Selected Writings, edited by Edgar Allan Poe, Penguin, 1967, pp. 138-157.
Rocard, Marcienne. “Unreading the World of Aritha Van Herk: An Interview.” Etudes Canadiennes/ Canadian Studies, no. 38, 1995, pp. 85-93.
Sangster, Joan. “Creating Popular Histories: Re-interpreting ‘Second Wave’ Canadian Feminism.” Dialect Anthropology, no. 39, 2015, pp. 381-404.
Saul, John Ralston. Reflections of a Siamese Twin. Viking, 1997.
Solecki, Sam, editor. Imagining Canadian Literature. The Selected Letters of Jack McClelland. Key Porter Books, 1998.
Stein, Karen. “Speaking in Tongues: Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God as Gothic Narrative.” Studies in Canadian Literature/ Études en littérature canadienne, vol. 20, no. 2, 1995, pp. 74-95.
Stouck, David. Major Canadian Authors: A Critical Introduction to Canadian Literature. 2nd ed., U of Nebraska P, 1984.
Stovel, Flora Foster. Divining Margaret Laurence: A Study of her Complete Writings. McGill- Queen’s UP, 2008.
—. “Sisters Under Their Skins: A Jest of God and The Fire-Dwellers.” New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism and Feminism, edited by Greta M. K. McCormick Coger, Greenwood P, 1996, pp. 63-80.
Thomas, Clara. The Manawaka World of Margaret Laurence. McClelland and Stewart, 1976.
Wainwright, J.A., editor. Preface and Introduction. A Very Large Soul. Selected Letters from Margaret Laurence to Canadian Writers, by Wainwright, Cormorant Books, 1995.
Xiques, Donez. Margaret Laurence. The Making of a Writer. Dundurn P, 2005.
Ahmed, Sarah. The Promise of Happiness. Duke UP, 2010.
Anderson, Ben, et al. “Encountering Berlant part two: Cruel and other optimisms.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 189, no. 1, 2023, pp. 143-60.
Atwood, Margaret. Afterword. A Jest of God, by Margaret Laurence, U of Chicago P, 1993, pp. 211-15.
—. Strange Things. The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. Virago, 2004.
Barber, Michael, and John B. Holbein. “400 million voting records show profound racial and geographic disparities in voter turnout in the United States.” Plos One, vol. 17, no. 6, 2022. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268134.
Berlant, Lauren, editor. Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion. Routledge, 2004.
—. Cruel Optimism. Duke UP, 2011.
—. “Feminism and the Institutions of Intimacy.” The Politics of Research, edited by E. Ann Kaplan and George Levine, Rutgers UP, 1997, pp. 143-61.
Bissoondath, Neil. Selling Illusions. The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada. Penguin, 2002.
Brandt, Di. “(Grand)mothering ‘Children of the Apocalypse’: A Post-postmodern Ecopoetic Reading of Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners.” Maternal Texts. Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literatures, edited by Elizabeth Podnieks and Andrea O’Reilly, Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2010, pp 253-69.
Brown, DeNeen. “Prairie Towns Die Slowly in Canada.” The Washington Post, 25 Oct. 2003, https://shorturl.at/ijEL7. Accessed 15 Nov. 2023.
Cameron, Donald, editor. Conversations with Canadian Novelists. Macmillan of Canada, 1973.
Carlyle, William J. “Rural Population Change on the Canadian Prairies.” Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences, vol. 4, no. 1, 1994, pp 65-87.
Coger, Greta M. K. “Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka: A Canadian Yoknapatawpha.” Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence, edited by Colin Nicholson, MacMillan, 1980, pp. 228-46.
Devereux, Cecily. “New Woman, New World: Maternal Feminism and the New Imperialism in the White Settler Colonies.” Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 22, no. 2, 1999, pp. 175-84.
Dvorak, Marta. “Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature, edited by Eva Marie Kröller, Cambridge UP, 2004, pp. 155-76.
Frye, Northrop. “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada.” The Bush Garden. Essays on the Canadian Imagination, edited by Northrop Frye, Anansi, 1995, pp. 213-51.
Harlow, Robert. “Lack of distance.” Review of A Jest of God, by Margaret Laurence. Margaret Laurence. Critical Views on Canadian Writers, edited by W. H. New, McGraw, 1977, pp. 189-91.
Heiland, Donna. Gothic and Gender. Blackwell, 2004.
Howells, Coral Ann. Contemporary Canadian Women’s Fiction. Palgrave, 2003.
—. Margaret Atwood. Macmillan, 1996.
Hughes, Kenneth. “Politics and A Jest of God.” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 13, no. 3, 1978, pp. 40-54.
Hutcheon, Linda. “Atwood and Laurence: Poet and Novelist.” Studies in Canadian Literature/ Ëtudes en literature Canadienne, vol. 3, no. 2, 1978, pp. 255-63.
Johnston, Richard, et al. “National Identity and Support for the Welfare State.” Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol. 43, no. 2, 2010, pp. 349–77.
Kreisel, Henry. “The Prairie: A State of the Mind.” Canadian Anthology, edited by Carl F. Klinck and Reginald E. Watters, Gage Educational Pub., 1974, pp. 620-27.
Kroetsch, Robert. “Fear of Women in Prairie Fiction: An Erotics of Space.” Crossing Frontiers, edited by Dick Harrison, U of Alberta P, 1979, pp. 73-83.
Laurence, Margaret. A Jest of God. 1966. McClelland & Stewart, 1988.
—. “Gadgetry or Growing? Form and Voice in the Novel.” Journal of Canadian Fiction, vol. 27, 1980, pp. 54-62.
—. “Ivory Tower or Grassroots?: The Novelist as a Socio-Political Being.” A Political Art, edited by William H. New, U of British Columbia P, 1987, pp. 15-25.
—. “Margaret Laurence. How to Make Contact with Other People.” YouTube, uploaded by One Show One, 3 Nov. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70LXW40mD0o.
—. “Ten Years’ Sentences.” Margaret Laurence. Critical Views on Canadian Writers, edited by W. H. New, McGraw, 1977, pp. 17-23.
—. “The Loons.” A Bird in the House. Seal Books, 1978.
Lecker, Robert. Margaret Laurence. Twayne Pub., 1981.
Mackey, Eva. The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada. U of Toronto P, 2002.
Oliver, Stephanie, and Kit Dobson. “Everything Is Awful? Ecology and Affect in Literatures in Canada.” Canada & Beyond, vol. 12, 2023, pp. 9-22.
Petrone, Penny. Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present. Oxford UP, 1990.
Pinder, Kait. “Margaret Laurence’s Living-Room War: Bringing Violence Home in the Fire Dwellers.” American Review of Canadian Studies, vol. 52, no. 4, 2022, pp. 402-21.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Selected Writings, edited by Edgar Allan Poe, Penguin, 1967, pp. 138-157.
Rocard, Marcienne. “Unreading the World of Aritha Van Herk: An Interview.” Etudes Canadiennes/ Canadian Studies, no. 38, 1995, pp. 85-93.
Sangster, Joan. “Creating Popular Histories: Re-interpreting ‘Second Wave’ Canadian Feminism.” Dialect Anthropology, no. 39, 2015, pp. 381-404.
Saul, John Ralston. Reflections of a Siamese Twin. Viking, 1997.
Solecki, Sam, editor. Imagining Canadian Literature. The Selected Letters of Jack McClelland. Key Porter Books, 1998.
Stein, Karen. “Speaking in Tongues: Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God as Gothic Narrative.” Studies in Canadian Literature/ Études en littérature canadienne, vol. 20, no. 2, 1995, pp. 74-95.
Stouck, David. Major Canadian Authors: A Critical Introduction to Canadian Literature. 2nd ed., U of Nebraska P, 1984.
Stovel, Flora Foster. Divining Margaret Laurence: A Study of her Complete Writings. McGill- Queen’s UP, 2008.
—. “Sisters Under Their Skins: A Jest of God and The Fire-Dwellers.” New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism and Feminism, edited by Greta M. K. McCormick Coger, Greenwood P, 1996, pp. 63-80.
Thomas, Clara. The Manawaka World of Margaret Laurence. McClelland and Stewart, 1976.
Wainwright, J.A., editor. Preface and Introduction. A Very Large Soul. Selected Letters from Margaret Laurence to Canadian Writers, by Wainwright, Cormorant Books, 1995.
Xiques, Donez. Margaret Laurence. The Making of a Writer. Dundurn P, 2005.
Varela-Zapata, J. (2024). The Long Way to Emancipation in Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 13, 105–120. https://doi.org/10.14201/candb.v13i105-120
+
−