Books and Articles
ALMEIDA, Gil Derlan Silva and Sebastião Alves Teixeira LOPES. “Do patriarcalismo em Semente de Bruxa, de Margaret Atwood = About the Patriarchalism in Hag-Seed, by Margaret Atwood.”
Tabuleiro de Letras, vol. 13, no. 2, 2019, pp. 104-117. In Portuguese with English abstract.
“Canadian feminist studies gained force and notoriety in the 1990s with the contribution of Margaret Atwood’s narrative. Considered one of the greatest writers of English language of the present time, her works describe situations of the obliteration of women and the force with which patriarchalism dominates and operates on them. In this article, we aim to analyze patriarchalism and its implications in the Atwoodian narrative Hag-Seed (2018). Her work is a retelling of The Tempest by William Shakespeare, where various questions and themes are interlaced, patriarchalism presents and reflects in the plot the situation of men’s power over female characters, scolding them and silencing them. Theoretical contributions are used in the discussion as proposed by Barbosa (2014), Barreto (2004), Felman (1993), Pateman (1993) and Perrot (2017). In this way, this article affirms how patriarchalism acted in the life and behavior of the characters that composed the plot of Hag Seed (2018).” (Authors).
Available from: http://www.revistas.uneb.br/index.php/tabuleirodeletras/article/view/7058.
AL-OGAILI, Thamer Amer Jubour, Manimangai MANI, Hardev KAUR, and Mohammad Ewan AWANG. “Marginalization of Women and Political Corruption in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” International Journal of Gender and Women’s Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, June 2019, pp. 53-60.
“This article examines the function of dystopia in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1986). The study will mainly focus of the issues of the marginalization of women and political corruption by analyzing the dystopian qualities in the novel. On the one hand, the
marginalization of women is going to be identified by discussing their inferior position in society as depicted in the novel. On the other hand, the issue of political corruption will be explored to sustain the study’s concern with the dystopian aspects of the novel. Postfeminism is going to be applied as the study’s theoretical framework.” (Authors).
Available from: http://ijgws.com/vol-7-no-1-june-2019-abstract-7-ijgws.
AL-WATTAR, Shaymaa Zuhair. “Breaking the Spell of the Male Gaze in Selected Women’s Ekphrastic Poems.” Journal of Education College, Wasit University, vol. 2, no. 37, 2019, pp. 681-687. In English with Arabic abstract.
“For centuries art and poetry have been inspiring each other and the relation between word and image constantly fascinates poets. The literary world has given poems that tackle artwork the name: ekphrasis. Ekphrasis represents a rich hunting ground for references, allusions, and inspiration for poets. However, this paper will argue that ekphrasis is powerfully gendered in that it privileges the male gaze. Traditionally, the male is given the strong position as the gazer, while the woman is locked in her predetermined role of the beautiful, silent, submissive, and gazed upon. Women poets refuse to adhere to the gendered ekphrastic tradition and the under-representation of women in ekphrastic poetry. They strongly challenge the ekphrastic tradition modifying it to create a distinctive feminist ekphrasis. Their poetry changes the male-dominated ekphrastic tradition that for centuries has pervaded Western cultures. The work of the poets Louise Bogan, Carol Ann Duffy, Rita Dove, and Margaret Atwood is an excellent example of women’s ekphrastic poetry that defies the tradition of the patriarchal male gaze in an attempt to break the spell of the male gaze.” (Author).
Available from: https://eduj.uowasit.edu.iq/index.php/eduj/article/view/1106.
ARBO, Jade Bueno and Eduardo MARKS DE MARQUES. “Confinadas em si mesmas: a morte social e o isolamento do sujeito em O conto da Aia, de Margaret Atwood = Confined in Themselves:
Social Death and the Isolation of the Subject in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Anuário de Literatura, vol. 24, no. 2, 2019, pp. 164-176. In Portuguese with English abstract.
“In The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the Republic of Gilead submits the women who are still fertile to a series of acts that result in a particular condition of death in life, a condition which can be called social death, which appears in its more extreme form, according to Patterson (1985), in the institution of slavery. From Patterson’s study, Lisa Gunther (2013) investigates the apparatus involved in making and unmaking someone’s personhood both externally (socially) and internally (subjectively). This paper proposes that the interpretation of the Handmaid’s condition as a condition of slavery allows for the understanding of the social practices that generate the effect of these subjects’ social death, as well as the understanding of the conditions of possibility of the regime presented by Atwood’s dystopia, which might seem extreme and far-fetched, but has its roots in a familiar apparatus of exclusion and violation.”
(Author).
Available from: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/literatura/article/view/2175-7917.2019v24n2p164.
ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO, ROYAL COMMISSION FONDS. “The Writers’ Union Meets the Royal Commission.” Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada, vol. 56, no. 1-2, May 2019, pp.
141-178.
“In November 1970, a crisis arose in the Canadian publishing industry: Ryerson Press, English Canada’s oldest publishing house, was sold to American branch plant McGraw-Hill. In
response, the Ontario government mounted a Royal Commission to investigate the business conditions of publishing in Canada. The commission accepted briefs from anyone who wanted their say and heard hundreds of hours of testimony. But it wasn’t until Farley Mowat bumped into Richard Rohmer at a party and demanded to know why the commission wasn’t talking directly to writers—they had actually heard from the few who had sent in briefs—that the date was set for 9 December 1971 for a group of writers to give their testimony. Some of those who testified went on to found The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) in 1973. Jack Gray went on to separate the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema,
Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) in order to get a better deal for scriptwriters. The writers testifying before the commission here include June Callwood, Margaret Atwood, Ian Adams, Hugh Garner, Al Purdy, Farley Mowat, Max Braithwaite, David Helwig, Jack Gray, Graeme Gibson, Fred Bodsworth, and Dennis Lee.”
Available from: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/bsc/article/view/32928.
ARRABAL, Álvaro Pina. “Gender and Victimization in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.” The Grove.
Working Papers on English Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, 2019, pp. 89-102.
“Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing (1972), a contemporary classic …, has raised the interest of all kinds of critics. Some of the most remarkable elements in the novel concern feminism. This paper deals with two specific aspects in Atwood’s work: gender and victimization.” (Author).
Available from: https://revistaselectronicas.ujaen.es/index.php/grove/article/view/4594.
ARSHAD, Aisha and Muhammad Safdar BHATTİ. “The Representation of Women in Dystopia: A Comparative Study.” IJASOS: International E-Journal of Advances in Social Sciences, vol. 5, no. 13, April 2019, pp. 374-379.
“The current paper is an expansion and comparative study of women … via the texts of two novels by Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood. It scrutinizes how these two authors depicted feminism in their novels from the perspective of Simone De Beauvoir who once wrote, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a Woman.’ The paper concludes that women should be judged on the basis of humanity rather than womanhood.” (Authors).
Available from: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ijasos/issue/44879/531478.
AUGUSTINA, J. and B. KAVITHA. “Identifying Self in Margaret Atwood’s The Journals of Susanna Moodie.” Language in India, vol. 19, no. 9, September 2019, pp. 39-45.
“The basic Self and Other binary make sense if one can see another person and recognize that that individual is separated both physically and mentally, then one can understand that the separate person is not the Self, but the Other. Susanna Moodie, an English settler, walks self-consciously and diffidently into the new place where she seems to be out of place: ‘I am a word / in a foreign language.’ Every immigrant becomes Other in the new land. This paper focusses on Moodie’s physical and mental experience in the new land as discussed by Atwood in The Journals of Susanna Moodie. She is entangled with the Canadian wilderness, civilization, language and culture. Though she attempts to create her ‘self,’ she fails and becomes Other to her new land. The Other is a state of being different from and alien to the social identity of the self. According to Atwood, Moodie’s doubleness persists in all Canadians who came as
immigrants to Canada (a marginalised country). In short, this paper attempts to convey how Mrs. Moodie identifies her ‘self’ as Other.” (Authors).
Available from: http://www.languageinindia.com/sep2019/index.html.
BACCOLINI, Raffaella. “Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-Present): Women’s Dystopian Science Fiction.” Sci-Fi: A Companion, edited by Jack Fennell, Peter Lang, 2019, pp. 125-131.
“This essay is an introduction to dystopian science fiction by women (from the 1970s) and then offers an analysis of two books that serve as examples of themes explored in the genre. The two books are Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Naomi Alderman’s The Power.”
(Author).
BALSMEIER, Pia. “Towards a Posthumanist Conceptualization of Society: Biotechnology in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy and Ruth Ozeki’s All over Creation.” Representations of Science in Twenty-First-Century Fiction: Human and Temporal Connectivities, edited by Nina Engelhardt and Julia Hoydis, Springer, 2019, pp. 93-111.
“This chapter investigates how current controversial biotechnological advancements, particularly regarding genetically modified food, enable conceptual as well as ontological changes to humanity and the human. Drawing on debates in the field of posthumanism in my analysis of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy and Ruth Ozeki’s novel All Over Creation, I demonstrate the significance of literary contributions to the topic. From an ethical vantage point grounded in critical posthumanism, I explore how imaginations of biotechnology impact concepts of posthuman society. Ultimately, I argue, anthropocentric and essentialist views on identity, race, gender, and family can be overcome by more valuable connectivities based on elective affiliations offered in the texts.” (Author).
BARANOWSKi, Anne-Marie. “Portraits croisés et autoportrait d’une meurtrière présumée: Alias Grace de Margaret Atwood.” La Violence: regards croisés sur une réalité plurielle, edited by Lucien Faggion and Christophe Regina, CNRS Éditions, 2019, pp. 523-548. In French with no English abstract.
Available from: https://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/16515.
BARMON, Christina. “‘Discards, All of Us’: Representations of Age in The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Handmaid’s Tale: Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance across Disciplines and Borders, edited by Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Janis Goldie, Lexington Books, 2019, pp. 183-191.
“Christina Barmon ... uses a feminist gerontological perspective to examine the representations of age in both the novel and Hulu TV series of THT. She looks at the intersection of age with gender and notes that both the novel and the television adaption ... draw on ageist and sexist stereotypes of women, where youth and reproductive ability are privileged and where older women are characterized as disposable or evil hag.” (Editors).
BARTOSCH, Roman. “We Have Always Already Been Becoming Posthuman? Posthumanism in Theory and (Reading) Practice.” New Approaches to the Twenty-First-Century Anglophone Novel, edited by Sibylle Baumbach and Birgit Neumann, Springer, 2019, pp. 137-155.
“This chapter introduces key ideas and crucial questions concerning the recent debates about posthumanist theory and its implications for reading the novel. After a brief introduction to philosophical posthumanism, it discusses two literary works, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) and J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man (2005), and outlines ways of approaching what is described as a ‘literary posthumanism’ by engaging with questions of form and genre as well as the role of embodiment and creaturely vulnerability for writing and reading novels. Literary
posthumanism can be understood both as a challenge of traditional forms of representation and as a call for new forms of interpretation and thus showcases the potential of the novel to stage, negotiate and, ultimately, reconfigure the meaning of concepts such as human
exceptionalism, narrative, and art.” (Author).
BERTRAND, Ingrid. “The Future and Past as Subversive Counter-Utopias in Margaret Atwood’s Novel and Bruce Miller’s Series ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’” Autofiktion Als Utopie // Autofiction as Utopia, edited by Rolf Parr Yvonne Delhey, Kerstin Wilhelms, Todd Herzog, Tanja Nusser, and Rolf Parr, Brill, 2019, pp. 145-164.
“At the origin of the theocratic republic of Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel and Bruce Miller’s Hulu series (2017—) ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ lies the utopian impulse of fundamentalist Christians to ‘do better’ in a society beset by rampant crime and plummeting fertility.
However, for the protagonist Offred, a forced surrogate mother, the utopian dream come true of Gilead’s instigators carries unmistakable nightmarish overtones. If, to borrow Atwood’s words in Dire Cartographies, ‘within each utopia […] [lies] a concealed dystopia,’ the opposite—‘within each dystopia, a hidden utopia’—holds equally true in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ for in both the novel and the first season of the series, the protagonist creates her own counter-utopia by both reconnecting with her forbidden past and imagining a better future beyond Gilead. As this article will show, the two media however differ in their approach to this utopian possibility. While in Atwood’s novel, Offred’s counter-utopia largely remains the non-existing good place, the series, by contrast, repeatedly asserts the possibility of utopian change and takes the dystopia one step further on the way to the actualisation of the desired utopia.”
(Author).
BREDA, Hélène. “Science-Fiction féministe, des œuvres aux fans: Engagements expressifs et militants autour des romans d’Ursula K. Le Guin, Marion Zimmer Bradley et Margaret Atwood.” ReS Future: Revue d’études sur la science-fiction, vol. 13, 2019, Online. In French with English abstract:
“This article deals with the female and feminist science fiction fandoms from the second half of the twentieth century to the 2010’s. It aims to show that, even though SF has often been considered as a male-dominated cultural area (from authors to audiences, and for character representations), many female readers and spectators appropriated the genre. Firstly, I put this subject into a historical perspective, by explaining that female SF fandoms were created in opposition to the male writers and fan communities which rejected them. As a consequence, the « fannes » had to organize somewhat secret activities and to produce their own derivative works, such as all-female SF fanzines. By doing so, they utilize the specific feminist potential of science fiction to gain agency and to convey some ideas related to women’s rights. In the second part of my study, through the example of fan creations inspired by the books of Ursula K. Le Guin, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Margaret Atwood, I develop the hypothesis that such productions (fanfictions, fanarts, various items) are both female empowerment and feminist activism tools.” (Author).
Available from: https://journals.openedition.org/resf/2271.
BRIGGS, Christine. “Mean Girls: Socialized Gender Construction and (Pre)Adolescent Interfemale Aggression in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” Margaret Atwood Studies, vol. 13, 2019, pp. 17-26.
“In her 1989 novel, Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood follows the life of protagonist Elaine Risely who, in her formative years, falls victim to the harsh psychological trauma and bullying administered by her so-called ‘best friend,’ Cordelia. In postwar North America, Elaine’s early
childhood is largely nomadic to accommodate her father’s work as a field entomologist. As a result of having spent the majority of her youth, up to this point, observing her mother outside the traditional domestic sphere, in addition to participating in the play habits of her older brother, Elaine soon discovers she is unprepared for the complicated and nuanced
relationships between young girls. At eight-years-old, Elaine desperately desires the
companionship of girls her age. Following her family’s permanent move to Toronto, she finds her own clique of neighborhood girlfriends, consisting of Carol Campbell, Grace Smeath, and Cordelia, the governing leader of this small group of girls, who demonstrates both
manipulative and controlling behavior by means of indirect aggression that eventually puts Elaine in actual danger. This essay explores the role of socialized gender identity construction and the implications of early adolescent intrafemale aggression in Cat’s Eye and argues that their oppressive behavior is the product of societal reinforcement of the subordinate female position within the patriarchal order.” (Author). Winner of the Society’s 2018 Best Graduate Essay Award.
CALLIS, Cari. “A Rose by Any Other Brand.” The Handmaid’s Tale and Philosophy: A Womb of One’s Own, edited by Rachel Robison-Greene, Open Court, 2019, pp. 111-122.
“‘What’s in a name?’ asks Juliet about Romeo, and immediately gives her own answer: ‘That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.’ This response has often been taken to imply that the names of things are not all that important, but Juliet didn’t make that mistake. The naming of people and things matters very much, as the citizens of Gilead also understand. Words have power. The Sons of Jacob who first seized control and created Gilead used marketing and branding to create a political philosophy designed to rule over others with absolute power. The Sons seized power in a time of political chaos. In this rapidly changing world, the citizens were unprepared for the carefully orchestrated reign of terror the Sons of Jacob would inflict upon them. This was no last-minute coup, but a carefully crafted marketing campaign....” (Author).
CARACCIOLO, Marco, Andrei IONESCU and Ruben FRANSOO. “Metaphorical Patterns in Anthropocene Fiction.” Language & Literature, vol. 28, no. 3, 2019, pp. 221-240.
“This article explores metaphorical language in the strand of contemporary fiction that Trexler discusses under the heading of ‘Anthropocene fiction’—namely, novels that probe the
convergence of human experience and geological or climatological processes in times of climate change. Why focus on metaphor? Because, as cognitive linguists working in the wake of Lakoff and Johnson have shown, metaphor plays a key role in closing the gap between everyday, embodied experience and more intangible or abstract realities—including, we suggest, the more-than-human temporal and spatial scales that come to the fore with the Anthropocene. In literary narrative, metaphorical language is typically organized in coherent clusters that amplify the effects of individual metaphors. Based on this assumption, we discuss the results of a systematic coding of metaphorical language in three Anthropocene novels by Margaret Atwood [Oryx and Crake], Jeanette Winterson, and Ian McEwan. We show that the emergent metaphorical patterns enrich and complicate the novels’ staging of the
Anthropocene, and that they can destabilize the strict separation between human experience and nonhuman realities.” (Author).
CARNEIRO, Fabianna Simão Bellizzi. “Releituras do gótico inglês setecentista no romance O Conto da Aia = Reinterpretations of the Eighteenth-Century Gothic in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Aletria:
Revista de Estudos de Literatura, vol. 29, no. 2, 2019, pp. 45-61. In Portuguese with English summary.
“This essay argues that the gothic genre, banished (unfairly) for a long time as a lesser type of writing, may raise important questions concerning our society and our social interactions. As such, it aims to [analyze] the novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, so as to identify and highlight elements of the gothic genre. A term coined during the 18th century, the gothic genre is characterized by fear, that is, physical and
psychological horror. Considering a gap of almost three centuries between the texts analyzed, we aim to show in this article that traditional elements of gothic writing continue to exist in the
psychological horror. Considering a gap of almost three centuries between the texts analyzed, we aim to show in this article that traditional elements of gothic writing continue to exist in the