Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Lessing, Doris (Vol. 94) - Carol Franko (essay date Summer 1995)

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Carol Franko (essay date Summer 1995)

SOURCE: "Authority, Truthtelling, and Parody: Doris Lessing and 'the Book,'" in Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 31, No. 3, Summer, 1995, pp. 255-85.

[In the following essay, Franko examines "Lessing's ambivalent attitude toward canonical authorities" by focusing on the ways in which the narrators of her novels and short stories—including The Golden Notebook, Briefing for a Descent into Hell, and "The Sun Between Their Feet"—use and view language.]

It's O.K. to hate your mom, it's in the book. (Lessing, The Golden Notebook)

What is the function of the story-teller? [Heide Ziegler and Christopher Bigsby, "Doris Lessing," The Radical Imagination and the Literary Tradition: Interviews with English and American Novelists, 1982]

Photographs or sketches of Doris Lessing (her hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun) adorn the covers of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Katherine Fishburn (essay date Summer 1988)
   2. Virginia Tiger (essay date Autumn 1990)
   3. John Bemrose (review date 24 August 1992)
   4. K. Anthony Appiah (review date 28 June 1993)
   5. Harriet Ritvo (review date 13 January 1994)
   6. Lisa Tyler (essay date Spring 1994)
   7. Richard Eder (review date 20 October 1994)
   8. Basil Davidson (review date 22 October 1994)
   9. Michiko Kakutani (review date 1 November 1994)
   10. Caroline Moorehead (review date 4 November 1994)
   11. J. M. Coetzee (review date 22 December 1994)
   12. William H. Pritchard (review date Summer 1995)
   13. Carol Franko (essay date Summer 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright