scholarly journals Writing, Aging and Death in Margaret Atwood’s The Door

2018 ◽  
pp. 135-156
Author(s):  
Pilar Sánchez Calle
Keyword(s):  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Childhood Memories ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
Poetry Collection

In The Door (2007) Margaret Atwood continues her movement from the trickster aesthetics of previous works (1965‒1986) towards the more human vision that she had developed in her poetry collection Morning in the Burned House (1995). The Door includes poems written between 1997 and 2007, and they trace similar concerns to other works published at this stage of Atwood’s career, such as The Blind Assassin (2002) and Moral Disorder (2007). My aim in this article is to explore the predominant themes in The Door, such as childhood memories, the writing process as a voyage into a dark underworld, death, aging, and the passing of time. Those reflections are accompanied by a formal analysis of the selected poems, where I discuss Atwood’s poetic voice, the different structures and rhythms of the poems, as well as the repeated presence of motifs such as the cellar, the underground world, and the well.

Beyond Borders

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Common Point ◽  
Global Village ◽  
Multicultural Identity ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
The Common ◽  
Voice Calls ◽  
Poetry Collection

Silvia Goldman presents the Chilean poet and performer Cecilia Vicuña’s poetry collection i tu (2004) as a postnational work of literature that addresses its reader in several languages, such as Spanish, English, and Quechua. Goldman argues that i tu establishes a speech “between languages,” able to pierce through territorial, cultural, and linguistic borders. The poetic voice calls this an “habla-alba” (a “dawn-speech”) that identifies the common roots of several languages and thus re-establishes the connections between them. By challenging pre-established linguistic, national, and cultural boundaries, Vicuña's poetry aims to construct a future based on the continual redefinition of a multilingual and multicultural identity.The poems ini tu, therefore, can be read as an itinerant geography within a provisional country, described by the poetic voice as a “no lugar.” Protected from exile and rootlessness, an alternative sense of belonging can be constructed. The collection i tu, as this chapter argues, builds its own utopian, alternative “global village,” where the threads that lead back to a common point of origin are made visible and where political, national, cultural, and linguistic borders are questioned.

scholarly journals Hearing Voices: A Corporeal Expression of Trauma in Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-820
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Symptom ◽  
Childhood Trauma ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
The Body ◽  
Childhood Memories ◽  
Hearing Voices ◽  
Inner World ◽  
The Voice

The study aims at giving the clinical symptom “Hearing Voices” a literary conceptualization through an analytical reading of Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle (1976). Shedding light on the synergy between the body, the voice, and trauma, the study specifically examines how the protagonist’s childhood trauma returns through the cracks of her consciousness in a form of hallucinations and hearing ghost voices in adulthood. The study also aims to explore how Atwood problematizes the notion of hearing voices to project her protagonist’s inner world. The ensuing discussion utilizes Sigmund Freud’s theorization on trauma’s embodiment through corporeality, as well as Cathy Caruth’s emphasis on the manifestation of trauma through both the voice and the body. Also relevant is Laura Di Prete’s focus on the interplay between embodied voices and speaking bodies. Keywords: Childhood memories; Corporeality of trauma; Hearing voices; Margaret Atwood,;Lady Oracle.

«sei sprechen dann die art of falling auseinander» La poetica del confine di Uljana Wolf

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Occhini
Keyword(s):  
Border Zone ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Poetry Collection

In her poetry collection falsche freunde the German-speaking artist Uljana Wolf develops a translinguale Lyrik, a poetic voice dwelling on a linguistic and geographical border zone. Building on Emily Apter’s concepts of untranslatability, this paper investigates how Wolf’s structural and thematic checkpoints instil a strong political commitment into her poetry. Furthermore, this engagement is here interpreted as the expression of the paradigm of the postmigrantische Gesellschaft. Finally, the paper argues that through the choice of the term ‘alien’ over the category ‘fremd’ Wolf suggests an innovative shift in the representation of migratory dynamics, from their cultural dimension to their biopolitical significance.

Imagining the Afro-Caribbean in García Márquez’s Fiction

2021 ◽  
pp. 144-168
Author(s):  
Adelaida López-Mejía
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Childhood Memories ◽  
African Slave ◽  
Minor Characters ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
Dependent Relationship ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Simon Bolivar ◽  
Cien Anos De Soledad

In a few early short stories, Gabriel García Márquez created minor characters described as “mulattos” or “negros”; the memorable character of Petra Cotes in Cien años de soledad (1967) is a “mulatta.” In El otoño del patriarca (1975), El amor en los tiempos de cólera (1985), El general en su laberinto (1989), and Del amor y otros demonios (1994), the Colombian-born author develops a more historical vision of the Caribbean as a culture inseparable from the lived experiences of descendants of the African slave trade. This article addresses the problematic construction of Afro-Caribbean subjectivity in García Márquez’s fiction, with particular attention to work published after Cien años de soledad. The 1972 short story “Eréndira” takes the story of a mulatta child-prostitute from a brief episode in Cien años and effectively hypersexualizes the Afro-Caribbean body. So, too, does El otoño del patriarca, with its frequent use of the epithet “burdel de negros” to refer to an imaginary Caribbean nation. The hypersexualization of Afro-Caribbean female characters permeates El amor en los tiempos del cólera. A psychologically dependent relationship between Simón Bolívar and his mixed-race valet in El general en su laberinto and then the “triumph” of a Spanish Renaissance poetic voice over childhood memories of African languages in Del amor y otros demonios provide the backdrop for the author’s final attempts to imagine Afro-Caribbean subjectivity in his fiction.

scholarly journals The Grief Beneath Your Mothertongue: Listening Through Poetic Inquiry

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-104
Author(s):  
Sheila Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Poetic Inquiry ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
Loss And Grief ◽  
Literacy Learners ◽  
Poetry Collection

This paper examines the process of writing a first poetry collection, A Hat to Stop a Train, as an example of poetic inquiry that has taught, and continues to teach about listening in and through language. It explores language as mothertongue, beginning with our relationships with our mothers and entwined with developing a poetic voice. Poetic inquiry brings insights into issues of silence and voice, loss and grief, for the author and her own writing, and also for the adult literacy learners she works with, whose circumstances and cultural and linguistic dislocations require careful listening.

scholarly journals THE EVOLUTION OF GENRE IN THE WRITING PROCESS

c i n d e r ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raelke Grimmer
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Styles ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time ◽  
Text Construction

Categorising works by genre can be controversial in literature. Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro are two examples of writers who have been vocal in denouncing the genre their works have been boxed into. Yet genre is an essential part of the writing process, because specific language, styles and structures are used within different social contexts to communicate purpose. This paper is a practice-led study that analyses the evolution in genre of what became a memoir, to illustrate how experimenting with different genres shaped the final form, structure and genre of the piece. While genre did not dictate the writing process from the first time I sat down to write, communicating my purpose the way I intended depended on finding the right genre. I worked on the memoir over a few years, and in that time the text began as a short story and then morphed to poetry, an essay, and finally, to a memoir. Once a completed work is published, the labelling of that work is then out of the writer’s hands. Yet separate to the role genre plays in selling books, genre is key in text construction and a tool that writers have at their disposal during the writing process to enrich their work.

They Have a Write to Go To College Too: Challenges for Secondary Level Students

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-13
Author(s):  
Joan Aker
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Secondary Level ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Language Disabilities ◽  
Written Language Development

Abstract Children with language disabilities at the secondary level experience significant difficulty in all components of the writing process. This article discusses issues contributing to student’s difficulty in writing as well as suggestions for how to support written language development in this population.

Self-Regulation and the Writing Process: Enhancing the Performance of Students With Language and Learning Difficulties

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary A. Troia
Keyword(s):  
Writing Process ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Learning Difficulties ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Struggling Learners ◽  
Evidence Based Practices

Abstract This article first provides an overview of components of self-regulation in writing and specific examples of each component are given. The remainder of the article addresses common reasons why struggling learners experience trouble with revising, followed by evidence-based practices to help students revise their papers more effectively.

Human vision: Some objective explorations.

1976 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorrin A. Riggs
Keyword(s):  
Human Vision
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document