Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  2057. FOERTSCH, Jacqueline. “The Bomb Next Door: Four Postwar Alterapocalyp-tics.” Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 30.4 (1997): 333-358. References The Handmaid’s Tale along with Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and George Orwell’s 1984.

  2058. GARCÍA, Ana María. “Margaret Atwood y la trampa liberadora del cuerpo feme-nino.” Mujeres Que Escriben Sobre Mujeres (Que Esbriben). Vol. 1. Ed. Cristina Piña. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 1997. 51-80. Discussion of El cuento de la criada, a Spanish edition of The Handmaid’s Tale. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Su-damericana, 1987).

  2059. GARDINER, Heather. “The Portrayal of Old Age in English-Canadian Fiction.” PhD thesis. University of Toronto, 1997. 226 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1999) and as .pdf document: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ27927.pdf. While not directly on Atwood, this thesis argues that “far from the notion of mere ‘survival’ suggested by Margaret At-wood in Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), powerful elderly English-Canadian protagonists break away from the confinement of ageing bodies and explore new realities.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 59.06 (December 1998): 2030.

  2060. GATZ, Diana M. “Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing: A Geography of the Mind.” MA thesis. California State University, Dominguez Hills, 1997. 61 pp. “Addressing the problem of the narrator’s split self in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, the paper examines the themes of reciprocity between culture’s artificiality, pollution of nature, sexual politics, and individual sterility. Close textual analysis focusing on At-wood’s concern with how reality is constructed reveals the resonance of her images in archetypal symbols, psychological stages, a feminist revisioning of the quest pattern, and especially Atwood’s invocation of goddess symbols and myth.” (Author). For more see MAI 35.04 (August 1997): 943.

  2061. GILBERT, E., and P. SIMPSON-HOUSLEY. “Places and Spaces of Dislocation: Lady Oracle’s Toronto.” Canadian Geographer / Geographe canadien 41.3 (Fall 1997): 235-248.

  2062. GORLIER, Claudio, and Anna VIACAVA. “Due romanzi di Margaret Atwood.” Indice dei Libri del Mese 14.7 (1997): 8.

  2063. GRACE, Dominick. “Margaret Atwood’s Northern Utopia: Nunavut and The Handmaid’s Tale.” Reflections on Northern Culture, Visions and Voices: Papers Presented at “Visions of the North, Voices of the North” Northern Culture Conference, Held at Nipissing University, North Bay, Ontario, May 24-26, 1996. Ed. A. W. Plumstead, Laurie Kruk, and Anthony Blackburn. North Bay [ON]: Nipiss-ing University, 1997. 75-82. “The novel concludes with a coda set in 2195 in Nunavit. The coda is key to our understanding of the novel.” (Author).

  2064. HAMMILL, Faye. “Sara Jeannette Duncan in the ‘Camp of the Philistines.’” Journal of Canadian Studies 32.2 (Summer 1997): 154-170. The newspaper columns Duncan wrote in the 1880s explore English Canada’s literary climate in relation to those of Great Britain and the United States, and this commentary is adapted and extended in her novel, The Imperialist. Duncan’s own literary talents were not highly valued in Canada, and she was forced to seek recognition and publication abroad. Yet her veiled criticisms of Canada’s “colonial” and philistine attitudes coexist in The Imperialist with an affirmation of her country’s creative potential. Her analysis prefigures those offered almost a century later by Northrop Frye, D. G. Jones, and Margaret Atwood, and it is significant that these critics all omit Duncan from their reviews of Canadian literature.

  2065. HANSEN, Elaine Tuttle. Mother without Child. Berkeley: U of California P, 1997. See especially “Mothers Yesterday and Mothers Tomorrow, but Never Mothers Today: Woman on the Edge of Time and The Handmaid’s Tale.” 158-183.

  2066. HEINIMANN, David. “Ironized Man: A Jest of God and Life Before Man.” Canadian Literature 154 (Autumn 1997): 52-67. The male characters in Laurence’s A Jest of God and Atwood’s Life Before Man were used to illustrate how misconceptions result in dysfunctional relationships between men and women. Laurence’s Nick Kazlik and Atwood’s Nate Schoenhof, together with the women they are involved with, should be viewed by readers as deserving of their sympathy.

  2067. HOGSETTE, David S. “Margaret Atwood’s Rhetorical Epilogue in The Handmaid’s Tale: The Reader’s Role in Empowering Offred’s Speech Act.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 38.4 (Summer 1997): 262-278. Suggests Atwood thinks that effective and affective reading have a role in the communication through which women regain their voice and become “social agents.”

  2068. HOWELLS, Coral Ann. “Morning in the Burned House: At Home in the Wilderness.” The Contact and the Culmination: Essays in Honour of Hena Maes-Jelinek. Ed. Marc Delrez and Bénédicte Ledent. Liège, Belgium: Liege Language and Literature, 1997. 69-78.

  2069. HSIEH, Shu-nu. “Madness and Sextual [sic] Politics in Margaret Atwood’s Suffac-ing [sic].” MA thesis. Tamkang University, 1997. 91 pp. For more see WorldCat.

  2070. HUDGENS, Brenda. “Faded Photographs: The Elusive Male in Margaret At-wood’s Fiction.” Publications of the Missouri Philological Association 22 (1997): 47-56. Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride.

  2071. JOHNSTON, Rita. “Memory as a Bridge to Self: A Narratological Study of Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” MA thesis. University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, 1997. 63 pp.

  2072. JUNEAU, Carol. “Through the Eyes of the Handmaid: A Dystopic Perspective of Fundamentalism in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” MA thesis. University of Houston–Clear Lake, 1997. 56 pp. Generally analyzed within the genres of feminist or utopian literatures, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is often overlooked as a novel with significant religious and philosophical connotations. For more see MAI 36.3 (June 1998): 682.

  2073. JURAK, Mirko. “Northrop Frye in Margaret Atwood: Njun Odnos Do Kanadske Samobi-Nosti in Kulture.” Zbornik Ob Sedemdesetletnici Franceta Bernika. Ed. Joze Faganel, Joze Pogacnik, and Matija Ogrin. Ljubljana: Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU, Institut za slovensko literaturo in literarne vede, 1997. 227-240. Canadian national identity as reflected in Frye and Atwood. In Slovenian with English summary.

  2074. KING, James. The Life of Margaret Laurence. Toronto: Knopf, 1997. Notes that Atwood’s friendship with Laurence was ruptured because Laurence felt rivalry with the younger writer and resented that Atwood had phoned Laurence’s daughter (Jocelyn) on the subject of her mother’s drinking.

  2075. KIZUK, R. Alexander. “A Rhetoric of Indeterminacy: The Poetry of Margaret Atwood and Robert Bly.” English Studies in Canada 23.2 (June 1997): 141-158.

  2076. KLAWITTER, Uwe. The Theme of Totalitarianism in “English” Fiction: Koestler, Orwell, Vonnegut, Kosinski, Burgess, Atwood, Amis. Frankfurt am Main; New York: P. Lang, 1997. See especially chapter 6 “Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Speculating about a New Totalitarianism.” 163-183. Originally presented as the author’s thesis (doctoral)—Ruhr Universität, Bochum, 1996.

  2077. KORTE, Barbara. Body Language in Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Examples from major works of literature, including novels and stories by Charles Dickens, J. D. Salinger, and Atwood.

  2078. LAGA, Barry E. “Posthistory: Negating and Negotiating Representations of History.” PhD thesis. Purdue University, 1997. 240 pp. Chapter 4 “reads The Handmaid’s Tale as an historical compilation of fragments from the past rather than a dystopia or prophesy about the future….” For more see DAI-A 58.09 (March 1998): 3519.

  2079. LECLAIRE, Jacques. “La deconstruction de la biographie dans The Robber Bride de Margaret Atwood.” La création biographique. Ed. Marta Dvorak. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 1997. 153-150. Focus on Zenia.

  2080. LI, Shuping. Tu wei de ke neng xing: Xiao shuo…. Lanzhou, China: Lanzhou University, Foreign Language Department, 1997. 31. On The Edible Woman. Title in Chinese romanized; text in English only with some bibliographical references in Chinese.

  2081. LIU, Kedong. “Narrative Situational Features in Margaret Atwood’s Prose Fictions.” MA thesis. Harbin Institute of Technology, 1
997. 75 pp. Title romanized. Text in Chinese only; abstract and some bibliographical references in Chinese.

  2083. LOUDERMILK, Kim A. “Fictional Feminism: Representing Feminism in American Bestsellers.” PhD thesis. Emory University, 1997. 380 pp. “This study focuses on the fictional feminism developed by five bestselling novels and their film adaptations: The Women’s Room and The Bleeding Heart by Marilyn French; The World According to Garp by John Irving; The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike; and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Drawing on the work of cultural critics such as Stuart Hall, Frederic Jameson and Janice Radway, I argue that while these texts sometimes provide liberatory experiences for individual readers, on a societal level, they recuperate radical ideas and uphold dominant cultural norms. Fictional feminism has consequences that reach beyond the texts that create it, however; it also influences cultural politics. I argue that recent non-fiction books that address feminist politics tend to devalue second-wave feminism and to criticize it based on fictional feminism.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 58.11 (May 1998): 4469.

  2084. MacMURRAUGH-KAVANAGH, M. K. “‘Through a Glass Darkly’: Fields of Vision, Identity and Metaphor in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and Shakespeare’s King Lear.” British Journal of Canadian Studies 12.1 (1997): 78-91.

  2085. MANTEL, Hilary. “Is This Story True?” Proceedings of the 20th International AEDEAN Conference. Ed. P. Guardia and J. Stone. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 1997. 37-46. Hilary Mantel’s novel A Place of Greater Safety (1992) is compared to Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996).

  2086. MARCH, Cristie. “Crimson Silks and New Potatoes: The Heteroglossic Power of the Object in Atwood’s Alias Grace.” Studies in Canadian Literature 22.2 (1997): 66-82.

  2087. MATTHEWS, David R. “Ways of Understanding: Canada and the Concept of Canadian Studies.” Journal of Canadian Studies 32.1 (Spring 1997): 28-43. Discusses Atwood’s contribution to the debate through her book, Survival.

  2088. McINTYRE, Susan Kathryn. “Angels and Sisters No More: Power among Women in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, and The Robber Bride.” MA thesis. California State University, Fresno 1997. 71 pp. “Margaret Atwood’s writing reveals her interest in the issue of power. In her earlier works, her female protagonists were engaged in power struggles with their male lovers or with patriarchal systems. In The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Cat’s Eye (1988), and The Robber Bride (1992), however, Atwood focuses on the use and misuse of power in women’s relationships with each other. Each consecutive novel portrays an increasingly powerful female figure who victimizes women, often with the help of other women. While this portrayal of women’s treatment of each other is unsettling, it also debunks two myths of womanhood—the Victorian Angel in the House and the feminist Sister. Viewed in this light, the trio of books illustrates Atwood’s belief that ‘Equality (for women) means equally bad as well as equally good.’” (Author). For more see MAI 36.04 (August 1998): 912.

  2089. MOREY, Ann-Janine. “Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison: Reflections on Postmodernism and the Study of Religion and Literature.” Toni Morrison’s Fiction: Contemporary Criticism. Ed. David L. Middleton. New York: Garland, 1997. 247-268. Morrison’s Beloved and Atwood’s Surfacing.

  2090. NELSON-BORN, Katherine A. “Trace of a Woman: Narrative Voice and Decen-tered Power in the Fiction of Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Louise Er-drich.” Literature Interpretation Theory 7.1 (1997): 1-12. These authors “layer the voices and meanings in their texts, foregrounding the linguistic antagonism present in their pluralized worlds of discourse. They draw attention to the structure of their fiction to expose the limitations of a white male dominated literature and discourse and to warn against the dangerous repercussion of a totalizing monologic narrative. Foregrounding the heteroglossia present in their works, these writers reveal the multiple voices present in narrative discourse, thus enabling the reader to trace the way back to voices that have been previously marginalized and subverted.” (Author).

  2091. NISCHIK, R. M. “Nomenclatural Mutations: Forms of Address in Margaret At-wood’s Novels.” Orbis Litterarum: International Review of Literary Studies 52.5 (1997): 329-351.

  2092. PALMER, Paulina. “Gender as Performance in the Fiction of Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood.” The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter: Fiction, Femininity, Feminism. Ed. Joseph Bristow and Trev Lynn Broughton. London; New York: Longman, 1997. 24-42. See especially sections entitled: “Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale, The Edible Woman and The Robber Bride” and “Carter, Atwood and Lesbian Genre Fiction.”

  2093. PALUMBO, Alice Marie. “The Recasting of the Female Gothic in the Novels of Margaret Atwood.” PhD thesis. University of Toronto, 1997. 272 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (2000) and in .pdf format: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ41571.pdf. “Atwood’s novels rewrite and re-vision aspects of the Female Gothic, the American Gothic, and the Canadian Gothic in their depiction of the problems of female identity and self-definition, human evil, and the demands and expectations placed on women and men by contemporary society….[After a short history of the Gothic] Chapters One through Seven will analyze each of Atwood’s novels published to date in detail. In each, Atwood’s use of the Gothic tropes of imprisonment, confinement, haunting, and surveillance will be examined. Atwood’s use and rewriting of the Gothic canon will also be considered. In the conclusion, I will present a brief analysis of Alias Grace, Atwood’s most recent novel, and show how Atwood has rewritten the Gothic form to depict female anxieties and contemporary political abuses, and to examine questions of human evil and the relations between space and time.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 60.10 (April 2000): 3660.

  2094. PAYNE, Lynn. The NEAP Guide to The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood): NEAP Guide. Carlton, Australia: NEAP [Novell Education Academic Partner], 1997. Guide for secondary school students.

  2095. PELLIZZARI, Paul. “This Is Who I Am and Why: Codes, Will, Confession and Transformation in Atwood, Ricci, Salinger and Baldwin.” MA thesis. Université de Montréal, 1997.

  2096. PERRAKIS, Phyllis Sternberg. “Atwood’s Robber Bride: The Vampire as In-tersubjective Catalyst.” Mosaic: Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 30.3 (September 1997): 151-168. Drawing on the intersubjective theories of psychoanalysts Daniel Stern and Jessica Benjamin, Perrakis explores the paradoxical role that Zenia, the psychological vampire, plays in The Robber Bride.

  2097. PHELPS, Henry C. “Atwood’s The Edible Woman and Surfacing.” The Explicator 55.2 (Winter 1997): 112-114. Similarities are observed between the two characters named “Joe” in both books. Both “Joes” have the same attitudes of concern and hostility towards women. The use of the two “Joes” in different books also illustrates the changes experienced by the first Joe in The Edible Woman during the 1960s, and the outcome of these changes as portrayed in Surfacing.

  2098. PORTER-LADOUSSE, Gillian. “Gender and Language in Margaret Atwood’s Poetry.” Commonwealth: Essays and Studies 20.1 (1997): 10-16.

  2099. RAMASWAMY, S. “Time, Space and Place in Two Canadian Poems: An Indian View.” International Journal of Canadian Studies 15 (Spring 1997): 121-133. At-wood’s “You Want to Go Back” and Bliss Carmen’s “Lord of My Heart’s Elation.”

  2100. REPENTIGNY, Anik de. “Le cercle vicieux: Traduction de The Circle Game de Margaret Atwood. Suivi de la poésie de Margaret Atwood et la nontraduction.” MA thesis. Université de Montréal, 1997. Translation of The Circle Game.

  2101. RESTUCCIA, Frances. “Tales of Beauty: Aestheticizing Female Melancholia.” American Imago 53.4 (Winter 1997): 353-384. Focuses on three women authors who produce melancholic writing including Anita Brookner, Margaret Drabble, and Atwood.

  2102. RIEMAN, Janice Elizabeth. “Memory: The Mother of All Nine Muses: Remembrances of Childhood in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction.” PhD thesis. Georgia State University, 1997. 234 pp. “Throughout Margaret Atwood’s fiction are painful and unpleasant childhood stories. These narrat
ives often remain imbedded in ostensible first stories wherein the characters encounter places or people that act as catalysts for remembering. Atwood’s use of a dual narrative strategy to tell both the adult and childhood story shows the inevitable connections between the two tales being told. The childhood story itself, and even more important, the character’s coming to terms with the story and somehow assimilating it into her present, remains paramount to her development and self-discovery….Atwood’s novels all explore the issue of how we know ourselves through our life stories. How we use them and how we choose to tell them—even to ourselves—reveals a great deal about who we are. The truth of the life lies not only in the content, but in the telling…. Atwood uses the childhood stories of her characters to reinforce the importance of remembering and owning one’s life story.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 59.01 (July 1998): 179.

  2103. ROBERTS, Nancy. Schools of Sympathy: Gender and Identification through the Novel. Montreal: McGill Queen’s, 1997. See especially Chapter 6 “‘Back Talk’: The Work of Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter.” 107-141.

  2104. RUBIK, Margarete. “National Identity, International Life Styles and Cosmopolitan Culture in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother,’ ‘Hurricane Hazel’ and ‘Unearthing Suite.’” Brno Studies in English (issued as Sbornik Praci Filozoficke Fakulty Brnenske Univerzity: Rada Anglisticka) 23 (1997): 145-150.