Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Lessing, Doris (Vol. 94) - Katherine Fishburn (essay date Summer 1988)

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Katherine Fishburn (essay date Summer 1988)

SOURCE: "Wor(l)ds within Words: Doris Lessing as Meta-Fictionist and Meta-Physician," in Studies in the Novel, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer, 1988, pp. 186-205.

[In the following essay, Fishburn contends that Lessing's novels are highly complex, subtly self-conscious "metafictions" and that "Lessing has never truly been the realist (we) critics thought her … [she] only masqueraded as one."]

—A book which does not contain its counter-book is considered incomplete.

                                Jorge Luis Borges

Although Doris Lessing is probably best known as the author of The Golden Notebook, I think it is safe to say that most critics would not characterize the bulk of her fiction as formally experimental or even up-to-date. In fact, with the possible exception of Canopus in Argos, they would probably consign...

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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