Transcript doris lessing ppt

Doris Lessing (1919-)
• "that epicist of the
female experience, who
with scepticism, fire
and visionary power
has subjected a divided
civilisation to
scrutiny".
2007 Nobel Prize Winner
• Born in Persia of British parents
• Grew up and educated in Zimbabwe (former
Southern Rhodesia)
• Left school at the age of 14 and then earned
her living as a nursemaid, telephone operator
and clerk.
• At 19 married Frank Wisdom, a civil servant;
they had two children. The marriage ended in
1943.
• In 1943 married the German political activist
Gottfried Lessing, a member of the inner circle
of the Rhodesian Communist Party.
• This second marriage also failed and in 1949
moved to England with her youngest child and
the manuscript of her first novel
Literary style
• Lessing's fiction is commonly divided
into three periods:
1. The realistic theme (the 1950s-1970s),
when she was writing on social issues;
2. The science fiction (the end of the
1970s-1980s);
3. Back to the realistic social analysis
(the 1980s-). However, these three
periods were overlapped in some sense.
Her themes
• Feminism
• the alienating power of science
• the individuals’ pursuit of their self in a
divided society
• her searching for a remedy for social
illness.
Children of Violence
1952
1954
1958
1968
1965
• Remember that the book which bores
you when you are twenty or thirty will
open doors for you when are forty or
fifty - and vice-versa.
---- Doris Lessing