Surviving the fittest: Margaret Atwood and the sparrow's fall

Margaret Atwood, one of the most spectacular authors of postmodern movement, achieved to unite debatable and in demand critical points of 21st century such as science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism in the novel The Year of The Flood written in 2009. The novel could be regarded as an ecocritical manifesto and a dystopic mirror against today’s degenerated world, tending to a superficial base to keep the already order in use, by moving away from the fundamental solution of all humanity: nature. Although Atwood does not want her works to be called science fiction, it is obvious that science fiction plays an introductory role and gives the novel a ground explaining all ‘why’ questions of the novel. However, Atwood is not unjust while claiming that her works are not science fiction because of the inevitable rapid change of 21st century world becoming addicted to technology, especially Internet. It is easily observed by the reader that what she fictionalises throughout the novel is quite close to possibility, and the world may witness in the near future what she creates in the novel as science fiction. Additionally, postmodernism serves to the novel as the answerer of ‘how’ questions: How the world embraces pluralities, how heterogeneous social order is needed, and how impossible to run the world by dichotomies of patriarchal social order anymore. And lastly, ecocriticism gives the answers of ‘why’ questions of the novel: Why humanity is in chaos, why humanity has organized the world according to its own needs as if there were no living creatures apart from humanity. Therefore, The Year of The Flood meets the reader as a compact embodiment of science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism not only with its theme, but also with its narrative techniques.

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Feminist Shakespeares: Adapting Shakespeare for a Modern Audience in the Hogarth Shakespeare Project

10.31237/osf.io/d25xy ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Colleen Etman

Keyword(s):

Margaret Atwood ◽

Female Characters ◽

Adaptation Theory ◽

Contemporary Culture ◽

The Winter's Tale ◽

Winter's Tale ◽

Female Authors ◽

The Tempest ◽

And Gender ◽

Female Characterization

The Hogarth Shakespeare Project presents a way to view Shakespeare’s plays through a different lens. These books allow for a feminist reading of Shakespeare, looking at some of Shakespeare’s ill-treated female characters to construct a new idea of female characterization. Three of the plays adapted, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and The Taming of the Shrew, were adapted by female authors. By investigating how these plays are being adapted for a more contemporary audience, with modern conceptions of feminism and gender roles, we can gain insight as to how these concepts have changed since Shakespeare’s time. By looking at these modern adaptations, we can interrogate how modern audiences as a whole conceptualize and, potentially, idealize Shakespeare, as well as understanding the progression of treatment of women in contemporary culture since Shakespeare’s time. The novels addressed in this project are The Gap of Time by Jeannette Winterson, Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood, and Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler. The project concludes that, of the three, Vinegar Girl does the most effective job addressing the problematic aspects of its adapted play in a new way, distinguishing it from previous adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew. This project also investigates the role that adaptation theory plays in addressing Shakespeare adaptations, particularly the Hogarth Shakespeare Project.

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Approche gothique du paysage canadien : « Death by Landscape » de Margaret Atwood

Caliban ◽

10.3406/calib.1996.1322 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 147-156 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Marcienne Rocard

Keyword(s):

Margaret Atwood

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La femme objet-de-consommation dans The Edible Woman de Margaret Atwood

Caliban ◽

10.3406/calib.1980.1115 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 111-120

Author(s):

Marcienne Rocard

Keyword(s):

Margaret Atwood

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Reseña de Claudia Lucotti. De Perséfone a Pussycat. Voz e identidad en la poesía de Margaret Atwood

Anuario de Letras Modernas ◽

10.22201/ffyl.01860526p.2014.19.569 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 19 ◽

pp. 220-222

Author(s):

Nair María Anaya Ferreira

Keyword(s):

Margaret Atwood

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BACK ON CIRCE'S ISLAND

Ramus ◽

10.1017/rmu.2020.12 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 49 (1-2) ◽

pp. 213-235

Author(s):

Michiel van Veldhuizen

Keyword(s):

Science Fiction ◽

Analogical Reasoning ◽

Gilles Deleuze ◽

Margaret Atwood ◽

Classical Antiquity ◽

Felix Guattari ◽

Dio Chrysostom ◽

The Witch ◽

The Moment ◽

Physical Degradation

The reception of Circe's island in and through Classical Antiquity has largely focused on the enigmatic sorceress herself. The long literary chain of interpretive topoi—Circe the witch, the whore, the temptress—stretches from Apollonius, Virgil, Ovid, and Dio Chrysostom to Spenser, Calderón, Joyce, Margaret Atwood, and Madeline Miller. Her role as Odysseus’ benefactor, so unmistakable in Homer, is soon forgotten; to Virgil, she is above all dea saeva, (‘the savage goddess’, Aen. 7.19). One distinguishing feature of Circe and her reception is the focus on representation: the enchantment of Circe, as Greta Hawes puts it, is above all a study in allegory. From the moment Circe put a spell on Odysseus’ companions, transforming them into animals in Book 10 of the Odyssey, Circe has invited analogical reasoning, centered on what the transformation from one being into another represents. More often than not, this transformation is interpreted according to a dualist thinking about humans and animals: subjects are transformed from one being into another being, thus representing some moral or physical degradation. This article, by contrast, concentrates on Circe's island through the lens of becoming-animal, the concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in the tenth plateau of A Thousand Plateaus, ‘1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible…’. I explicate the concept of becoming-animal by applying it to a Deleuzian encounter with Circe's island, both in its ancient articulations and in its various receptions, including H.G. Wells's science fiction novel The Island of Dr. Moreau.

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