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The Golden Notebook has always been controversial since the day of its publication. Since then, it has experienced a gradually deepening process from one-sided perspective to multiple. A large number of critics both at home and abroad study this novel from different aspects which focus on the perspectives of Lessing’s literary techniques, form, feminism, philosophy and so on.
In terms of the form of this novel, Magali Cornier Michael is sure of its metafictional category as he says, “The Golden Notebook is no doubt a work of metafiction.”(Michael, 1996: 380) In praising Lessing’s handling of this new form, Jiang Hong considers The Golden Notebook as “meaningful form.” She points out that Lessing’s adoption of note is better than traditional forms to express the theme. Its breakthrough of linear plot clearly shows the process of understanding. Starting with the studies of female spiritual world, Huang Mei, on the basis of complex meaning of “freedom” identified in the novel, argues that the understanding of women’s lives is not only linked with female spiritual world, but also related to the lives of contemporary people. In Margaret Drabble’s view, a famous critic, The Golden Notebook is the first book he has read, apart from Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex, which seems to be really addressing the problems of women in the contemporary world. Harold Bloom speaks highly of Lessing’s portrayal of women as “the most thorough and accurate of any in literature”. (Bloom, 1986: 101) Other critics focus on some other features of this novel. Li Fuxiang discusses the political and female spiritual world themes and general features of the different stages of Lessing’s novels. Michael Thorpe and Roberta Rubenstein point out that persified and complex as Lessing’s fictions are the significance of her fiction is her depiction of modern symptom: isolation, dichotomy and madness.
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The Golden Notebook has proved Doris Lessing’s monumental achievements in the world literature for the distinctive design of form, the wide perception of the world issues and most prominently the profound insight of the women in relation to men. As soon as the book published in 1962, it gained widespread concern from British and American critics. It has been studied in gradual deepening progress from single to rich, one-sided to multiple, and from scattered to the systematic, which can be pided into three phases in chronological order.
The first phase covers the 1960s. The original pioneering book is Doris Lessing by Dorothy Brewster in 1965, a critical biography of Lessing, representing the achievement of the preliminary study of Lessing with the exploration of her novels, ideological connotation, the dream image, psychoanalytic theory as well as the striking artistic features of The Golden Notebook. Besides, Paul Schlueter published the book The Novels of Doris Lessing, where he comprehensively described Doris Lessing’s career, and analyzed the heroine Anna Woof from the view of auto gnosis. Both of them paved the way for penetrating into the study of Doris Lessing and The Golden Notebook.
The second phase spanned from the 70s to 90s of the twentieth century．During the period，the research of Lessing and her works emerged in large numbers in the types of monographs，collected works as well as papers. For instance，Doris Lessing’s Africa by Michael Thorpe, trying to explore her Africa as dream and reality. The book The Novelistic Vision of Doris Lessing by Robert Rubenstein，illustrates Lessing’s fictional performance in the form of consciousness. Jean Pickering published Understanding Doris Lessing as a section of Understanding Contemporary British Literature series, which comprehensively reviewed Lessing’s major works by identifying and amplifying the themes, material, structures, usage of language and so on. Doris Lessing: The Poetics of Change by Gayle Green in 1997 published, which records Lessing’s contributions to what is the most important theoretical argument in recent years.