Research On African Image In Doris Lessing’s Novels

The creative writing career of Doris Lessing is divided into three stages:early stage(1950-1961), middle stage(1950-1961), and later stage(1979-2007). Correspondingly, the image of Africa in her African theme novels changed three times as well in the three stages:The first stage, the image shaped in Lessing’s early period works reflected in the novel The Grass is Singing published in the year 1950, Africa is pregnant with resisting power even under colonization. The second stage, Lessing’s representative work in the middle stage is The Golden Notebook which published in the year 1962, among this work, chaotic African image shaped in "The Black Notebook" is the representative in this stage. The third stage, African Laughter:Four Visits to Zimbabwe, published in the year 1992, is the work intensively describing the African image by the image of Zimbabwe created by Lessing in her later creative career. The independent image of Africa which has won the struggle for national liberty is depicted.The change of Lessing’s African image has a very intimate relationship with different perspectives when viewing Africa. And it is the changing views that reveals the changing attitude towards Africa, the evolution of her political thought and the suspicion and reflection of western rational tradition.This dissertation is composed by five parts. Part one reviews and analyzes overseas and domestic research status of African image currently in the Lessing’s works. In the second chapter, we analyze the characteristics of African image in Lessing’s early stage works taking The Grass is Singing as an instance. Lessing’s Humanitarianism thought, and the political idea of overturning colonization by extreme resist, and the calling for national liberty are reasons for shaping her image of Africa. In the third chapter, we describe the African image in the middle stage taking "The Black Notebook" as an example. At this moment, Lessing found the reality that neither the western idea of liberty, equality and democracy nor the communism belief of the Soviet Union is able to rescue the chaotic Africa. In the fourth chapter, we make an analysis of the characteristics of Lessing’s later works taking African Laughter:Four Visits to Zimbabwe as an example. The author puts down the persistence to change Africa with her own thoughts, and the novel reflects the wish for trying hard to break away from the Western Centrism, presenting African image objectively. The last chapter, we summarize the main ideas of whole thesis and conclude the characteristics of the African image in the different three stages as well as the reasons for their changes.