Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  97.DAVIDSON, Arnold E. “Future Tense: Making History in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 113-121. Historical notes bring up questions of boundaries between fiction and history and the construction and conditioning of history by academics.

  98.______. “The Poetics of Pain in Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm.” American Review of Canadian Studies 18.1 (Spring 1988): 1-10. Atwood’s new commitment to telling the painful truth is illustrated by the “calculus of suffering” that transforms the protagonist and through the complex, non-escapist ending.

  99.De VOOGD, Peter J. “A Handmaid’s Harm: Or, Margaret Atwood’s Dystopia.” External and Detached: Dutch Essays on Contemporary Canadian Literature. Ed. Charles Forceville, August J. Fry, and Peter J. de Voogd. Canada Cahiers, no. 4. Amsterdam: Free UP, 1988. 29-35. Although similar in structure, style, and content, the dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale is less successful than Bodily Harm.

  100.FOSTER, John Wilson. “The Poetry of Margaret Atwood [Six Books of Poetry, from The Circle Game to You Are Happy].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 153-167. Reprinted from Canadian Literature 74 (Autumn 1977): 5-20.

  101.FREIBERT, Lucy M. “Control and Creativity: The Politics of Risk in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 280-291.

  102.FULFORD, Robert. Best Seat in the House: Memoirs of a Lucky Man. Toronto: Collins, 1988. See especially Chapter 10, “Mythology, Politics, and Atwood.” 185-205. In this chapter Fulford discusses cultural nationalism and politics in At-wood’s life and works as she participated in their creation.

  103.GADPAILLE, Michelle. The Canadian Short Story: Perspectives on Canadian Culture. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1988. See especially “Margaret Atwood.” 82-98. Discusses Dancing Girls, Bluebeard’s Egg, and Murder in the Dark, addressing Atwood’s ability to transcend the boundaries of the short story form and her continual challenging of the language.

  104.GARRETT-PETTS, W. F. “Reading, Writing, and the Postmodern Condition: Interpreting Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Open Letter 7.1 (Spring 1988): 74-92. The Handmaid’s Tale’s history as narrative links the postmodern reading experience with didactic intentions and issues of power, identity, and self-expression.

  105.GEDDES, Gary. “Notes on the Poets: Margaret Atwood.” 15 Canadian Poets X2. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1988. 521-522. Outlines themes and techniques in Atwood’s works; includes a brief biographical statement.

  106.GERSTENBERGER, Donna. “Revisioning Cultural Norms: The Fiction of Margaret Atwood and Alice Walker.” Cross-Cultural Studies: American, Canadian, and European Literatures: 1945-1985. Ed. Mirko Jurak. Ljubljana, Yugoslavia: English Department, Filozofka Fakulteta, Edvard Kardelj University of Ljubljana, 1988. 47-51. Surfacing and The Color Purple provide hopeful alternatives to the norms of gender and race created through language and other cultural systems.

  107.GLOVER, Douglas. “Her Life Entire.” Books in Canada 17.7 (October 1988): 11-14. Introduces Cat’s Eye, which is “as thematically diverse and complex as anything she has written.”

  108.GRACE, Sherrill E. “In Search of Demeter: The Lost, Silent Mother in Surfacing.” Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 35-47. Surfacing keynotes are loss and silence in a “double-voiced discourse of Demeter & Persephone within a wilderness quest.”

  109.GRAY, Francine du Plessix. “Nature as Nunnery [Surfacing].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 131-134. Reprinted from New York Times Book Review 17 July 1977: 3, 29.

  110.GREENE, Gayle. “Life Before Man: ‘Can Anything Be Saved?’” Margaret At-wood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 65-84. Achieves modernist goal by freeing “narrative from plot so that she can focus on inner events that are the real adventures.” Studies time and experience of time, seeing hope through change in individuals.

  111.GREENE, Sharon Elaine. “The Body Politic: Women, Language, and Revolution in Three Contemporary Novels.” PhD thesis. Emory University, 1988. 253 pp. Explores the female body, language, and revolution against patriarchy in Bodily Harm and works by Naipaul and Didion. For more see DAI-A 49.06 (December 1988): 1599.

  112.GROSSKURTH, Phyllis. “Survival Kit.” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 66-70. Reprinted from New Statesman 24 August 1973: 254-255.

  113.HELLER, Arno. “Die Literarische Dystopie in Amerika mit einer Exemplarischen Erorterung von Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid’s Tale.” Utopian Thought in American Literature: Untersuchungen zur literarischen Utopie und Dystopie in den U.S.A. Ed. Arno Heller, Walter Holbling, and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. Bu-chreiche zu den Arbeiten aus Anglisik und Amerikanistik, Band 1. Tubingen: Gun-ter Narr, 1988. 185-204. Within the scope of the American dystopian tradition, The Handmaid’s Tale goes beyond the conventional dystopic narrative and achieves individualistic, conservative goals.

  114.HELWIG, David. “[Review of The Animals in That County].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 32-33. Reprinted from Queen’s Quarterly 76 (Spring 1969): 161-162.

  115.HENGEN, Shannon Eileen. “Margaret Atwood’s Power.” PhD thesis. University of Iowa, 1988. 200 pp. The gaining of power by Atwood’s female characters, combined with a leftist political view, forms a complex definition of Canadian-ness. For more see DAI-A 49.08 (February 1989): 2224.

  116.HINZ, Evelyn J. “The Religious Roots of the Feminine Identity Issue: Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel and Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.” Margaret Laurence: An Appreciation. Ed. Christl Verduyn. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1988. 82-100. “Reprinted from Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études cana-diennes 22.1 (Spring 1987).”

  117.HITE, Molly. “Writing—and Reading—the Body: Female Sexuality and Feminist Fiction.” Feminist Studies 14.1 (Spring 1988): 121-142. The patriarchally created image of the female body is taken apart and demystified in Lady Oracle and works by Walker, Lessing, and Wittig.

  118.HJARTARSON, Paul. “The Literary Canon and Its Discontent: Reflections on the Cultural Reproduction of Value.” Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens 10.5 (1988): 67-80. Highlights The Handmaid’s Tale and Kroetsch’s Badlands to illustrate the contingency of aesthetic value and the impact of gender and cultural forces on the formation of a Canadian literary canon.

  119.HUTCHEON, Linda. The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction. Toronto; New York; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. See especially “Process, Product, and Politics: The Postmodernism of Margaret Atwood.” 138-159. Atwood’s work represents the epitome of the postmodern paradox. It expresses the tension between the process and the result of art and develops political and moral responsibility in the reader.

  120.IRVINE, Lorna. “The Here and Now of Bodily Harm.” Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 85-100. Abridged version of “Atwood’s Parable of Flesh.” Reprinted from Sub/Version, Toronto: ECW Press, 1986. A superficial, heavily coded plot articulates and liberates the female body.

  121.______. “Murder and Mayhem: Margaret Atwood Deconstructs.” Contemporary Literature 29.2 (Summer 1988): 265-276. Murder in the Dark’s textual games give insight to other works; deconstructed language has redemptive possibilities and allows new structures.

  122.KANE, Patricia. “A Woman’s Dystopia: Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.” Notes on Contemporary Literature 18.5 (November 1988): 9-10. The success of The Handmaid’s Tale as a dystopia lies in the central character who “does not identify with victims and cares only about a man’s love.”

  123.KINGDEN, Elizabeth. “A Faulty Diagnosis of Society’s Ills as Seen in Margaret Atw
ood’s Handmaid’s Tale.” Cross-Canada Writer’s Quarterly 10.2 (1988): 7, 32. The premise of population decline is one of several problems that make The Handmaid’s Tale “a seriously flawed work.”

  124.KURIBAYASHI, Tomoko. “The Desire for Transformation: A Study of the Significance of Clothes in Atwood’s Fiction.” MA thesis. University of Alberta, 1988. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1989).

  125.LANGER, Beryl Donaldson. “Class and Gender in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction.” Australian-Canadian Studies 6.1 (1988): 73-101. Confrontation of the social and moral dilemmas of the late 20th century’s “new class” is one of the greatest strengths of Atwood’s fiction.

  126.LARKIN, Joan. “Soul Survivor [Surfacing and Power Politics].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 48-52. Reprinted from Ms. May 1973: 33-35.

  127.LAURENCE, Margaret. “[Review of Surfacing].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 45-47. Reprinted from Quarry 4 (Spring 1973): 62-64.

  128.LILIENFELD, Jane. “Circe’s Emergence: Transforming Traditional Love in Margaret Atwood’s You Are Happy.” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 123-130. Reprinted from Worcester Review 5 (Spring 1977): 29-31, 33-37.

  129.LOZAR, Tom. “America in the Canadian Mind.” Cross-Cultural Studies: American, Canadian, and European Literatures: 1945-1985. Ed. Mirko Jurak. Ljubljana, Yugoslavia: English Department, Filozofka Fakulteta, Edvard Kardelj University of Ljubljana, 1988. 379-85. Examines varieties of nationalism and internationalism in Canadian literature and culture. “Anti-Americanism of the Surfacing/Survival type is part of the Canadian intellectual’s uniform.”

  130.LYNCH, Denise E. “Personalist Plot in Atwood’s Bodily Harm.” Studies in the Humanities 15.1 (June 1988): 45-57. The parallel structure and complexity of Bodily Harm’s plot builds a personalist consciousness of “creative non-victim” for the reader and the protagonist.

  131.MacLULICH, T. D. “Atwood’s Adult Fairy Tale: Lévi-Strauss, Bettelheim, and The Edible Woman.” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 179-197. Reprinted from Essays on Canadian Writing 11 (Summer 1978): 111-129.

  132.MALLINSON, Jean. Margaret Atwood. Toronto, ON: ECW Press, 1988.

  133.MANDEL, Ann. “[Review of True Stories].” Critical Essays on Margaret At-wood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 245-251. Reprinted from Fiddle-head 131 (January 1982): 63-70.

  134.MANDEL, Eli. “Atwood Gothic [You Are Happy, Surfacing, Survival, The Animals in That Country, The Circle Game and Power Politics].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 114-123. Reprinted from Malahat Review: Margaret Atwood: A Symposium. Ed. Linda Sandler. 41 (January 1977): 165-174.

  135.McCOMBS, Judith. “Country, Politics, and Gender in Canadian Studies: A Report from Twenty Years of Atwood Criticism.” Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens 10.5 (1988): 27-47. Lack of warmth is a key issue in 20 years of Atwood criticism by men and women in Canada and the United States.

  136.______. “Politics, Structure, and Poetic Development in Atwood’s Canadian-American Sequences: From an Apprentice Pair to ‘The Circle Game’ to ‘Two-Headed Poems.’” Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryn VanSpanck-eren and Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 142-162. Sees works in two stages of development and documents changes in treatment of Canadian-American themes beginning in early unpublished papers.

  137.McCOMBS, Judith, ed. Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. 306. Reprints a “range of the best obtainable and still-key Atwood criticism.” Individual entries indexed in this section. Detailed introduction complements and gives perspective to the selections.

  138.McMILLAN, Ann. “The Transforming Eye: Lady Oracle and Gothic Tradition.” Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 48-64. Perception and transformation equal the “transforming eye” that allows the heroine maturity and insight into a Gothic tradition that is no longer an “instrument of patriarchy.” Some comparison with Northanger Abbey.

  139.MONTIGNY, Denise de. “Giving Birth = [Donner naissance].” MS thesis. University of Ottawa, 1988. 219 pp. French translation with commentary. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1989).

  140.NABAR, Vrinda. “Self-Discovery Through Integration with One’s Past: Reflections on Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.” Peace, Development and Culture: Comparative Studies of India and Canada. Ed. Harold Coward. Calgary: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, ©1988, printed 1990. 73-82. Relates Atwood’s remarks to Indo-English literature and says that tradition is a different experience from the Canadian one; this paper was presented at a conference in 1988 for the 20th anniversary of the institute.

  141.NAULTY, Patricia Mary. “‘I Never Talk of Hunger’: Self-Starvation as Women’s Language of Protest in Novels by Barbara Pym, Margaret Atwood, and Anne Tyler.” PhD thesis. Ohio State University, 1988. Anorexic behavior in Quartet in Autumn, The Edible Woman, and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is a language of protest against women’s prescribed roles in a dysfunctional society. For more see DAI-A 50.01 (July 1989): 140.

  142.NEWMAN, Christina. “In Search of a Native Tongue [Surfacing].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 43-45. Reprinted from Maclean’s September 1972: 88.

  143.ONDAATJE, Michael. “[Review of The Circle Game].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 29-32. Reprinted from Canadian Forum April 1967: 22-23.

  144.ONLEY, Gloria. “Power Politics in Bluebeard’s Castle [Power Politics, The Edible Woman, Surfacing, Survival, Procedures for Underground and ‘Polarities’].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 70-89. Reprinted from Canadian Literature 60 (Spring 1974): 21-42.

  145.OSADNIK, Waclaw M. “Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man as a Comment on Contemporary Human Relationships.” Studies in Semiotics and Poetics of Canadian and English Literature. Ed. Waclaw M. Osadnik. Vienna: S. & B. Publishers, 1988. 17-24.

  146.______. “The Semiotic Interpretation of Ritualistic Behaviour in the Literary Work: Margaret Atwood: Surfacing.” Studies in Semiotics and Poetics of Canadian and English Literature. Ed. Waclaw M. Osadnik. Vienna: S. & B. Publishers, 1988. 1-16.

  147.PIERCY, Marge. “Margaret Atwood: Beyond Victimhood [Survival, The Edible Woman, Surfacing and Five Books of Poetry].” Critical Essays on Margaret At-wood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 53-66. Reprinted from American Poetry Review 2 (November-December 1973): 41-44.

  148.PURDY, A. W. “Atwood’s Moodie [The Journals of Susanna Moodie].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 38-42. Reprinted from Canadian Literature 47 (Winter 1971): 80-84.

  149.REDEKOP, Magdalene. “Charms and Riddles [Bluebeard’s Egg].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 256-258. Reprinted from Canadian Forum January 1984: 30-31.

  150.RILEY, Ruby J. “Childbirth in Literature.” MA thesis. University of Houston, 1988. 70 pp. Unlike writers of an earlier age, Atwood, Doris Lessing, and Toni Morrison use birth scenes for a variety of purposes. For more see MAI 27.03 (Fall 1989): 352.

  151.ROBINSON, Sally. “The ‘Anti-Logos Weapon’: Multiplicity in Women’s Texts.” Contemporary Literature 29.1 (Spring 1988): 105-124. Uses French feminist theories of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva in analysis of Surfacing, Joanna Russ’s The Female Man, and Bertha Harris’s Lover.

  152.ROGERS, Jaqueline Eleanor McLeod. “Aspects of the Female Novel: Experience, Pattern, Selfhood.” PhD thesis. University of Manitoba, 1988. Studies the difference in principles and content between female novels and the traditional novel, covering the chronological period from Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko to The Handmaid’s Tale. For more see DAI-A 49.04 (October 1988):
808.

  153.ROSOWSKI, Susan J. “Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle: Fantasy and the Modern Gothic Novel.” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 197-208. An earlier version was published in Research Studies 49.2 (June 1981): 87-98.

  154.RUBENSTEIN, Roberta. “Nature and Nurture in Dystopia: The Handmaid’s Tale.” Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 101-112. Inversions of nature and nurture themes “connect the personal and political dimensions of victimization and survival in explicitly female and feminist terms.”

  155.______. “Pandora’s Box and Female Survival: Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm.” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 259-275. Reprinted from Journal of Canadian Studies 20.1 (Spring 1985): 120-135.

  156.SAN, Shusmita. “Bluebeard’s Egg and Other Stories: Margaret Atwood’s Portraits of the Resilient Woman.” MA thesis. Eastern Washington University, 1988. Source: WorldCat.

  157.SCHLUETER, June. “Canlit/Victimlit: Survival and Second Words.” Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 1-11. Support of Atwood’s victim premise in Survival and how it is broadened in Second Words.

  158.SKELTON, Robin. The Memoirs of a Literary Blockhead. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1988. This humorous autobiography by the poet and writer tells of Skel-ton’s life in England and Canada, but focuses on his experiences with other literary figures, such as Atwood, as well as Ezra Pound, Milton Acorn, and Dorothy Live-say.

  159.______. “[Review of The Journals of Susanna Moodie and Procedures for Underground].” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. Boston: Hall, 1988. 34-35. Reprinted from Malahat Review 17 (January 1971): 133-134.

  160.STAELS, Hilde. “Margaret Atwood.” Post-war Literatures in English: A Lexicon of Contemporary Authors. Ed. Johannes Willem Bertens. Alphen aan den Rijn: Samson Uitgeverij; Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1988: 1-10. Biography and critical essay followed by Bibliography of Primary Sources, A1, and Bibliography of Secondary Sources, B1-B3.