Publication details
The Resonance of Manawaka: Landscapes of Reconciliation in Margaret Laurence's Manawaka Series
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | During the 1960s and 1970s, Prairie fiction and literary criticism predominantly adopted a regionalist perspective. However, with gender, class, and ethnicity in the spotlight, this perception of the region has shifted from a preoccupation with physical landscapes toward exploring individual spaces of people inhabiting this distinct region and their inner landscapes. In Margaret Laurence's Manawaka series, the vast expanse of the Canadian Prairies serves as a transformative literary landscape in which Laurence weaves together the stories of settlers and the Métis, representing both the dominant and marginalized communities. Laurence challenges the prevailing Pioneer myth of conquering uninhabited land by emphasizing the role of the landscape as a catalyst for the transformation of her protagonists. By interweaving the region's mythological past into the protagonists' journeys towards self-discovery, independence, and dignity, Laurence conveys the idea of reconciliation on both personal and national levels. This paper focuses on the opening and concluding Manawaka novels, The Stone Angel (1964) and The Diviners (1974), aiming to trace how Laurence employs various landscapes, whether Prairie, mythological, ancestral, or imaginary, as potent instruments aiding the protagonists - and metaphorically Canada itself - in the process of transformation and liberation. These landscapes also symbolize reconciliation with nature, colonial history, and Indigenous heritage. |