Literature, African

Within the remarkable diversity of Doris Lessing's fiction, the author's interest in the interrelation between the individual and the collective remains a constant. Her early works pursued this theme within a socio-political framework; however, her continued explorations have evolved an apolitical ethos which unfolds progressively in all of her work since The Golden Notebook. The impetus of this development, which has encouraged Lessing's experiments with various narrative techniques, is her desire to articulate a formula integrating the self with society; in one form or another, the catalyst of this integration is the creative imagination. By tracing related thematic and aesthetic courses of development in four novels--The Golden Notebook, The Four-Gated City, The Making of the Representative for Planet Eight, and The Good Terrorist--this thesis will demonstrate how Lessing's quest for integration has shaped her present apolitical ethos.

Literature is influenced by the society in which it is
written. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner and
Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton have many similarities
because the societies which produced them have similarities.
The Old South and the Afrikaner society of South Africa
have many historical occurrences and cultural attitudes
in common, among them: former slave societies, wars
with aborigenes, an agrarian-industrial conflict in
which they were defeated, racial segregation, Calvinist
religion, and an intermingling of the past and the
present. Absalom, Absalom! and Too Late the Phalarope
have the following in common: tone, titles of despair,
character types, function of setting, qualities of
Greek tragedy, Biblical allusions and syntax. A sociological literary study may help to understand how
a society influences its literature.