THE PROPHETIC TRUTH OF DORIS LESSING: A STUDY OF 'CANOPUS IN ARGOS: ARCHIVES'

This study of Doris Lessing's recent series of science fiction novels, Canopus in Argos: Archives, locates the works as prophetic histories. Using the genre of space fiction, as she calls it, Lessing has presented histories of earth (in Shikasta and The Sirian Experiments), of consciousness (in The Marriages of Zones Three, Four, and Five and The Making of the Representative of Planet Eight), and of Empire (in The Sentimental Agents of the Volyen Empire).;Her use of the space fiction genre thus assumes the shape of prophetic history in that it provides an imaginative spatial enlargement and temporal extension of the perspective through which a reader can view the moral predicament of humanity.;The five middle chapters of this thesis consist of explications of each of these novels and an analysis of them as history and as prophecy, with critical discussions relating them to appropriate intellectual and literary traditions (e.g. historical theory, alchemy, political satire). The framing chapters include an introduction which connects this speculative fiction to Lessing's earlier realistic fiction and presents a critical perspective on her work differing from that of most reviewers, who are bewildered or distressed by what they see as a new direction in her writing. Not only has Lessing's earlier fiction led to this science fiction in ways that I trace, but the Canopus novels also can be seen as a fulfillment of her artistry rather than a peculiar diversion. Chapter two, on history as narrative structure, provides a general orientation to my approach to her work. The final two chapters offer a framework of various prophetic traditions which illuminate Lessing's own prophetic voice and a discussion of Canopus in Argos: Archives as a contemporary epic.