Bodies that Speak

Traumatic Corporeal Spatiality in Doris Lessing's Novella "The Eye of God in Paradise"

Authors

  • Maria Eugenia Berio Universidad de Malaga

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17561/grove.v29.7237

Keywords:

space, literature, body, war, trauma

Abstract

The present article examines the treatment of spatial corporeality in Doris Lessing’s novella “The Eye of God in Paradise” (1957) set in Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War. Even though Lessing’s works have been studied from different perspectives—as the abundant critical studies show—, spatial corporeality has not been analysed before. This paper argues that the characters’ bodies, insofar as physical spaces of flesh and blood that are lived and where power is exerted, represent the trauma encountered by countless anonymous people who suffered due to the horrors of the war and who have only been made visible by the author’s skilled pen. By highlighting the corporeal spatiality in its physical, psychological, and sociohistorical division, Lessing has brought to the fore the intense suffering of unknown people, to give them identity as well as visibility and transform them into a locus of contesting power relations.

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Author Biography

  • Maria Eugenia Berio, Universidad de Malaga

    I am an English Philologist with a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Cuyo,
    Mendoza Argentina. My field of research is Space, Postcolonial Literature, and Literature
    written by women. I am currently doing my Ph.D. about Doris Lessing’s use of space in her
    short fiction set in Europe.

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Published

2022-12-23

How to Cite

Berio, M. E. (2022). Bodies that Speak: Traumatic Corporeal Spatiality in Doris Lessing’s Novella "The Eye of God in Paradise". The Grove - Working Papers on English Studies, 29, 11-30. https://doi.org/10.17561/grove.v29.7237