Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  498.FITTING, Peter. “The Turn from Utopia in Recent Feminist Fiction.” Feminism, Utopia, and Narrative. Ed. Libby Falk Jones and Sarah Webster Goodwin. Tennessee Studies in Literature, Vol. 32. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. 141-158. The Handmaid’s Tale is one of 4 novels that illustrate recent feminist preoccupation with a dystopian patriarchical society; the value of these novels lies in the reminder that vigilance is needed in our world.

  499.FOLEY, Michael. “‘Basic Victim Positions’ and the Women in Margaret At-wood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Atlantis 15.2 (Spring 1990): 50-58. Applies the four types of victims as presented in Survival to the female characters of The Handmaid’s Tale, finding the narrator the most interesting.

  500.FULLBROOK, Kate. Free Women: Ethics and Aesthetics in Twentieth-Century Women’s Fiction. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1990. See especially “Margaret At-wood: Colonisation and Responsibility.” 171-193. In a book examining statements and texts by women writers of significant ethical and aesthetic achievement, this chapter is devoted to the themes of change, responsibility, and refusal of innocence in Atwood’s novels.

  501.GILBERT-MACEDA, Ma Teresa. “Metafora en lo alto de los cielos, metaforas al fondo de la calle: El uso de la metafora en Life Before Man, de Margaret Atwood.” Epos: Revista de Filologia 6 (1990): 511-520.

  502.GILLESPIE, Tracey. “Elements of the Gothic in the Novels of Margaret Atwood.” MA thesis. University of Alberta, 1990. 109 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1991). “Atwood’s three most strongly Gothic novels— Lady Oracle, Bodily Harm, and The Handmaid’s Tale—chronicle the lives of ‘Gothic’ heroines who manage to break out of male-defined roles and forge their own identities, independent of patriarchal society’s narrow parameters of female identity. In Atwood’s hands, the Gothic becomes a political tool that disrupts the status quo and subverts dominant ideology. Her novels offer alternative endings to the standard Gothic’s happily-ever-after marriages. By refusing to re-encapsulate the female fears and anxieties she raises, Atwood challenges our society’s destructive stereotypes of gender and genre.” (Author). For more see MAI 30.02 (Summer 1992): 218.

  503.GOODWIN, Ken. “Revolution as Bodily Fiction: Thea Astley and Margaret At-wood.” Antipodes 4.2 (Winter 1990): 109-114. Explores the politics of decolonization and the issues of fear and identity related to revolution in the inwardly personal Bodily Harm and the outwardly political Beachmasters.

  504.GOTSCH-THOMSON, Susan. “The Integration of Gender into the Teaching of Classical Social Theory: Help from The Handmaid’s Tale.” Teaching Sociology 18 (January 1990): 69-73. Uses The Handmaid’s Tale as a reference point for introducing gender issues and feminist perspectives in the classroom.

  505.GRANOFSKY, Ronald. “Fairy-Tale Morphology in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.” Mosaic 23.4 (Fall 1990): 51-65. Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale is employed to interpret the female narrator’s subversion of the fairy-tale element.

  506.GREENE, Gayle. “Margaret Laurence’s Diviners and Shakespeare’s Tempest: The Uses of the Past.” Women’s Re-Visions of Shakespeare. Ed. Marianne Novy. Ur-bana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990. 166-167. Brief mention of Surfacing and Lady Oracle in comparison to Laurence’s Diviners and as “feminist quest novels.”

  507.HALES, Lesley Ann. “Sorcery to Spirituality in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” Month 23.9-10 (September-October 1990): 382-387. View of Elaine’s spiritual search, pointing out the elements of the Catholic Church present in the journey.

  508.HAMMER, Stephanie Barbé. “The World as It Will Be? Female Satire and the Technology of Power in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Modern Language Studies 20.2 (Spring 1990): 39-49. Satire in this novel appears in both its traditional form and as a reaction to the male satiric canon.

  509.HAWKINS, Harriett. Classics and Trash: Traditions and Taboos in High Literature and Popular Modern Genres. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1990, passim. Cat’s Eye and Lady Oracle illustrate the theme of a woman’s conflict between artistic talent and romantic love.

  510.HENNEBERGER, Sandra. “Strange and Playful Paradigms in Margaret Atwood’s Poetry.” Women’s Studies 17 (1990): 277-288. “The concept of dual-track, separate modes of consciousness within a single person, as explored in Two-Headed Poems by Margaret Atwood reflects her complex view of language.” (Author).

  511.HERRICK, Jim. “A Humanist Warning: The Handmaid’s Tale.” New Humanist 106.4 [i.e., 105] (December 1990): 13. Compares film and novel.

  512.HORNER, Avril, and Sue ZLOSNIK. Landscapes of Desire: Metaphors in Modern Women’s Fiction. New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Tokyo; Singapore: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990. See especially “Beyond Boundaries and Back Again: Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.” 181-202. Examines water and nature as means for the narrator to find herself and come to terms with her past.

  513.JAIDEV. “‘How Did We Get Bad?’ The Lessons of Surfacing.” Ambivalence: Studies in Canadian Literature. Foreword by Margaret Atwood. Ed. Om P. Juneja and Chandra Mohan. New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1990: 276-283. These lessons are cultural, and thus political, and the power expressed is an important and relevant lesson, more so for Third World countries than for Canada.

  514.JARRETT, Mary. “The Presentation of Montreal in Mavis Gallant’s ‘Between Zero and One’ and of Toronto in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” Études canadi-ennes / Canadian Studies 29 (1990): 173-181. “Mavis Gallant’s portrayal of Montreal in her story story…and Margaret Atwood’s portrayal of Toronto in her novel…at first appear very similar. Each city is perceived through the eyes of the female protagonist, and each appears more of less disconcerting, not to say repel-lant. But the painter Elaine Risley is eventually reconciled to her Toronto whereas the writer Linnet Muir cannot be reconciled to her Montreal.” (Author).

  515.JENA, Seema. Carving a Pattern out of Chaos: Withdrawal, a Narrative Device in Women’s Writing. New Delhi: Ashish Pub. House, 1990. Focus on the works of Atwood as well as of Anita Desai.

  516.JUNEJA, Om P., and Chandra MOHAN, ed. Ambivalence: Studies in Canadian Literature. Foreword by Margaret Atwood. New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1990. 304. Many scattered references in addition to chapters specifically on Atwood; see Jaidev, Singh, and Vevaina in this section.

  517.KAUFFMAN, Linda. “Special Delivery: Twenty-First-Century Epistolarity in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Courage and Tool: The Florence Howe Award for Feminist Scholarship 1974-1989. Ed. Joanne Glasgow and Angela Ingram. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1990. 218-237. Reprinted from Writing the Female Voice: Essays in Epistolary Literature. Ed. Elizabeth Goldsmith. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1989.

  518.KITCH, Sally L. “A Worm in the Apple: French Critical Theory and the Metaphor of the Child in the Work of Atwood and Broner.” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 44.1-2 (1990): 35-49. Applies French theories of discourse by Kristeva and others, to “the child as maternal metaphor,” and linguistic/cultural structures in Life Before Man and A Weave of Women.

  519.KLAPPERT, Peter. “I Want, I Don’t Want: The Poetry of Margaret Atwood.” Gettysburg Review 3.1 (Winter 1990): 217-230. Atwood’s 2 volumes of selected poems show a move from precision and pessimism to greater accessibility and compassion. “Modulation” begins in You Are Happy, with a “reflective tone” evolving in Interlunar.

  520.KLARER, Mario. “Frau und Utopie: Funktion von Geschlecht in der literarischen Utopie mit exemplarischen Analysen anglo-amerikanischer Frauenromane.” PhD thesis. Leopold-Franzens Universitaet Innsbruck (Austria), 1990. 307 pp. Translation of German title: “Woman and Utopia: The Function of Gender in Literary Utopias with Illustrative Analyses of Anglo-American Women’s Novels.” “This study deals with the role of gender in the utopian tradition, considering works by both male and female authors. A general introduction to the most recent trends in feminist literary theory provides the theoretical framework for the subsequent three major chapters: The first examines gender-specific issues in
male utopias ranging from Greco-Roman, medieval and early modern to contemporary Anglo-American literary utopias. The second surveys the female tradition of the genre starting in the Middle Ages and culminating in the feminist works of the last two decades. The third and last part of this study is devoted to independent analyses of four utopian novels by female authors. Common to all four texts is a metafictional or metatheoretical approach, i.e. reflections on gender in relation to writing. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein implies a gendered critique of science; Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale reflects on gender and media of expression; Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground problematizes gender as a criterion for the production of texts and Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed links gender with narrative techniques. The overall aim of this investigation is to trace the question of gender in both utopian traditions, putting special emphasis on metafictional aspects in the works of Anglo-American female writers.” (Author). For more see DAI-C 54.04 (Winter 1993): 983.

  521.______. “The Gender of Orality and Literacy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 15.2 (1990): 151-170. Relates recent anthropological and ethnological scholarship, and recent feminist literary theory, to the political and gender implications of the oral tradition and literacy concepts in The Handmaid’s Tale. In German.

  522.KOLODNY, Annette. “Margaret Atwood and the Politics of Narrative.” Studies on Canadian Literature. Ed. Arnold E. Davidson. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1990. 90-109.

  523.KORTE, Barbara. “Margaret Atwoods Roman The Handmaid’s Tale: Interpreta-tionshinweise für eine Verwendung im Englischunterricht der Sekundarstufe II.” Die Neueren Sprachen 89.3 (June 1990): 224-242. Atwood’s dystopia relates to conditions of contemporary world; this contrasts with the dystopian works that are often taught in Germany.

  524.______. “Textuelle Interdependenzen in Margaret Atwoods Roman The Handmaid’s Tale.” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Kanada-Studien 10.1 (1990): 15-25. More than her other novels, The Handmaid’s Tale opens up another dimension of interpretation by way of other texts. With this intertextual dimension, The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates subtly the value and the persistence of these traditions.

  525.KRÓTKI, Karol Jósef, and Guy C. GERMAIN. “Demographic concerns in Belles-lettres: Insights from the Writings of Gűnter Grass and Margaret Atwood.” Edmonton: Population Research Laboratory, University of Alberta, 1990. 12. (Research discussion paper, University of Alberta. Population Research Laboratory, no. 61).

  526.KUESTER, Martin Herbert. “History as Parody: Parodic Structures in Contemporary English-Canadian Historical Novels.” PhD thesis. University of Manitoba, 1990. Both Bodily Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale use parodies; Atwood’s feminism marks her as distinct from male postmodernism. For more see DAI-A 53.01 (July 1992): 155.

  527.LANGER-DEVINE, Maureen C. “Literary Reconceptualizations of Woman and Nature.” DPhil thesis. Universitaet für Bildungswissenschaften Klagenfurt (Austria), 1990. 170 pp. “This study analyses the concepts of woman and nature from the frame of reference of the discourses of ecofeminism and gynocriticism in seven North American feminist novels: Surfacing (Margaret Atwood), The Diviners (Margaret Laurence), The Color Purple (Alice Walker), The Women of Brew-ster Place (Gloria Naylor), Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy), The Wan-derground (Sally Gearhart), Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson).” (Author). For more see DAI-C 53.03 (Fall 1992): 399.

  528.LECKER, Robert, Jack DAVID, and Ellen QUIGLEY, eds. Canadian Writers and Their Works. Fiction Series. Vol. 5. Toronto: ECW Press, 1990. passim. Atwood briefly mentioned in chapter on Ernest Buckler.

  529.______. Canadian Writers and Their Works. Poetry Series. Vol. 4. Toronto: ECW Press, 1990. passim. A few comments on Atwood in chapters on F. R. Scott and A. J. M. Smith.

  530.______. Canadian Writers and Their Works. Poetry Series. Vol. 7. Toronto: ECW Press, 1990, passim. Scattered references to Atwood in several chapters.

  531.LECLAIRE, Jacques. “Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye as a Portrait of the Artist.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 13.1 (1990): 73-80. Art’s creation harks back to the artist’s personal experiences; however, being an artist is part of a larger world, “among several possible ways of being.”

  532.LEE, Jerrine Emma. “Myth and Belief in Margaret Atwood’s Domestic Fiction.” MA thesis. University of Victoria, 1990. 128 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1991). “This study examines Atwood’s use of classical mythology, fairy tale, and realism to challenge traditional ideas about home as a place and about woman’s place in society. Close readings of The Edible Woman, Lady Oracle, and Life Before Man as well as selected stories from two collections, Dancing Girls and Bluebeard’s Egg, show how Atwood uses revision-ary mythopoesis and realistic details to create both settings and characters which undercut the concepts of these two domestic, and largely patriarchal, assumptions.” (Author). For more see MAI 30.03 (Fall 1992): 484.

  533.LUCKING, David. “In Pursuit of the Faceless Stranger: Depths and Surfaces in Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm.” Studies in Canadian Literature 15.1 (1990): 76-93. Through turning Rennie’s experience inside out, the illusions that keep the world apart from her are subverted.

  534.McGUIRE, Ann. “Margaret Atwood and English Studies: An Intellectual Context for Her Early Prose.” PhD thesis. University of Western Australia, 1990. 292 pp.

  535.McVANN, Mark. “Destroying Death: Jesus in Mark and Joseph in ‘The Sin Eater.’” The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story. Ed. Robert Detweiler and William G. Doty. American Academy of Religion. Studies in Religion. Ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, no. 60. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990. 123-136. Both stories are that of divine mediators and life transformations in which uncrossable boundaries are crossed.

  536.MICHAEL, Magali Cornier. “Feminism and the Postmodernist Impulse: Doris Lessing, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, and Angela Carter.” PhD thesis. Emory University, 1990. 132 pp. The thesis offers “specific readings of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus. Each of these novels has roots in the dominant themes of Anglo-American literature, yet each also testifies to various disruptive postmodern strategies that have been appropriated to feminist ends. My analyses of these four novels focus among other things on Lessing’s use of narrative disruptions and of madness, Piercy’s placing of worlds in confrontation, Atwood’s unveiling of the gap that exists between official ‘History’ and women’s histories, and Carter’s appropriation of fantasy and carnivalization. Furthermore, I attempt to join these specific readings to a general consideration of the potential contribution of these authors’ disruptive strategies to feminist criticism as well as to contemporary literature.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 51.05 (November 1990): 1609.

  537.MOREY, Ann-Janine. “The Old In/Out.” The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story. Ed. Robert Detweiler and William G. Doty. American Academy of Religion. Studies in Religion. Ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, no. 60. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. 169-180. Feminist interpretation of Mark and At-wood’s narratives, focusing on attack by demons and the irony that for females, rescue may be worse than the attack.

  538.MURPHY, Patrick D. “Reducing the Dystopian Distance: Pseudo-Documentary Framing in Near-Future Fiction.” Science-Fiction Studies 17.1 (March 1990): 25-40. Atwood’s “post-future history” pseudo-documentary in The Handmaid’s Tale, and the “contemporaneous journalistic” technique in Murphy and Strieber’s War-day and the Journey Onward, bring the tenor and vehicle closer together to produce an enhanced cognitive experience.

  539.MURRAY, Heather. “The Woman in the Preface: Atwood’s Introduction to the ‘Virago’ Edition of Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush.” Prefaces and Literary Manifestoes/Prefaces et manifestes litteraires. Ed. E. D. Blodgett and Anthony Purdy. Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1990. 90-97
. (Conference organized by the Research Institute for Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta, 12-14 November 1987).

  540.MURRAY, Shauna. “Narrative Strategies in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Bluebeard’s Egg.’” British Journal of Canadian Studies 5.1 (1990): 127-140.

  541.NESTOR, Theo Pauline. “The Cottage Novel: A Study of Three Novels by Canadian Women.” MA thesis. San Francisco State University, 1990. On Atwood’s Surfacing, Margaret Laurence’s Diviners, and Audrey Thomas’s Intertidal Life.

  542.NORRIS, Ken. “‘The University of Denay, Nunavit’: The ‘Historical Notes’ in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” American Review of Canadian Studies 20.3 (Autumn 1990): 357-364. Discusses several ways this device furthers At-wood’s plot and its interpretation.

  543.PAGET, Elsie. “The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood’s Use of Carnival and the Postmodern.” MA thesis. McMaster University, 1990. 123 pp.

  544.PALETTA, Anna. “From Subordinate to Subversive: Feminist Fiction as an Instrument in Expanding and Changing the Social Meaning of Gender.” MA thesis. University of Victoria, 1990. 204 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1991). This thesis “looks at contemporary feminist fiction as counter-hegemonic cultural production, i.e., as an instrument in expanding and changing the social meaning of gender. A theory is developed which posits that counter-hegemonic feminist fiction accomplishes three political objectives: unmasking women’s subordination, creating models of resistance to it, and prefiguring systems towards which change can move.” (Author). Novels studied include The Handmaid’s Tale, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women. For more see MAI 30.03 (Fall 1992): 567.

  545.PARRY, Sally E. “Becoming a Jezebel: Taking on Roles in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Exercise Exchange 36.1 (Fall 1990): 26-27. Outlines a college-level classroom exercise for exploring societal roles in The Handmaid’s Tale.