Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  853.ANDRE, Alestine. “Offred at the Roman Catholic Hostel.” Atlantis: A Women Studies Journal 17.2 (Spring-Summer 1992): 104-105.

  855.BACCOLINI, Raffaella. “Forme dell’Utopia 1: Breaking the Boundaries: Gender, Genre, and Dystopia; Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Bagni di Lucca 12-14 settembre 1990.” Per una definizione dell’utopia: Metodologie e discipline a con-fronto. Ed. Nadia Minerva; introduction by Vita Fortunati. Ravenna: Longo, 1992. 137-146.

  856.BALCOM, Ted. Book Discussions for Adults: A Leader’s Guide. Chicago; London: American Library Association, 1992. 22. The Handmaid’s Tale is mentioned as a selection for women’s book discussion groups.

  857.BARR, Marleen S. Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992. See especially “Hesitation, Self-Experiment, Transformation—Women Mastering Female Narrative.” 183-224. Joan of Lady Oracle is able to rewrite her life, discarding patriarchal stories in favor of the woman’s narrative.

  858.BERAN, Carol L. “Intertexts of Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man.” American Review of Canadian Studies 22.2 (Summer 1992): 199-214. Analysis of the influence of other cultural and literary texts upon this novel.

  859.BESSNER, Neil. “Beyond Two Solitudes, After Survival: Postmodern Fiction in Canada.” Postmodern Fiction in Canada. Ed. Theo D’haen and Hans Bertens. Amsterdam: Rodopi and Antwerpen: Restant: 1992. 9-25. Atwood’s role in Canadian literature is examined, and Surfacing is seen as “a powerful novel with a compelling plot.”

  860.BLAKE, Marjorie Rose. “Speculative Fiction and Mothering: Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” MA thesis. University of Victoria, 1992. 111 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1992). Among other matters, this thesis focuses “on Piercy’s and Atwood’s employment of speculative fiction for their innovative explorations of mothering. [It delves] briefly into the development of new birth technologies and consider[s] how Piercy’s and Atwood’s conjectural visions shed light on the present sociological problems that influence women’s quotidian decisions.” (Adapted from Author). For more see MAI 31.04 (Winter 1993): 1493.

  861.BÖK, Christian. “Sibyls: Echoes of French Feminism in The Diviners and Lady Oracle.” Canadian Literature 135 (Winter 1992): 80-93. The female writer in both novels experiences the transformation of identity into being her own muse and is thus able to upset patriarchal creativity.

  862.BOWER, Martha Gilman. “Seduction and Sedation: Doctors’ Plunder of Female Space.” Misogyny in Literature: An Essay Collection. Ed. Katherine Anne Ackley. New York; London: Garland Publishing, 1992. 225-245. References The Handmaid’s Tale as a futuristic version of women as victims as men control their bodies through medicine.

  863.BOWERING, George. “Atwood’s Hook.” Open Letter, Eighth Series 2 (Winter 1992): 81-90. The short poem “You fit into me / like a hook into an eye / a fish hook / an open eye” is analyzed as representative of many of the themes of At-wood’s other works.

  864.BRAIN, Tracy Eileen. “The Female Body in Women’s Writing: From Sylvia Plath to Margaret Atwood.” PhD thesis. University of Sussex, 1992.

  865.BREWSTER, Elizabeth. “Autobiographical essay.” Contemporary Authors: Autobiography Series. Vol. 15. Ed. Joyce Nakamura. Detroit, MI; London: Gale Research, 1992. 157-158. Mentions Atwood’s influence and her inspiration for a poem, “Poem for a Young Sorceress.”

  866.BRITTON, Krista M. “Gilead Within: Margaret Atwood’s Science Fiction.” MA thesis. Kent State University, 1992.

  867.BURNHAM, Julie E. “Voice and Origin in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction.” MA thesis. Rice University, 1992. 59 pp. “In contradiction to Lyotard, who posits an equal relationship between listener and speaker in Just Gaming and The Postmodern Condition, Atwood examines the ways in which women’s voices are stifled by men’s terroristic control of the speaking position. Her novels reveal a significant flaw in Lyotard’s work: he ignores the effects which a political or hierarchical system has on his ideal language grid. Within contemporary patriarchal societies, At-wood’s heroines must struggle against male dominance in order to fulfill what Lyotard calls ‘the obligation to retell.’ Irigaray argues that women’s exclusion from discourse can be traced back to Plato’s myth of the cave, in which both men and women are encouraged to forget their maternal origins. In Atwood’s novels, women must return to and revalue their maternal origins in order to find a voice, and the stories they must retell are altered versions of those of the mother.” (Author). For more see MAI 31.01 (Spring 1993): 85. [Ed. note: See Irigaray, “Plato’s Hysteria.” Speculum of the Other Woman. Tr. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985. 243-364.]

  868.CALDWELL, Larry W. “Wells, Orwell, and Atwood: (EPI)Logic and Eu/Utopia.” Extrapolation 33.4 (Winter 1992): 333-345. Thomas More’s Utopia is starting point for discussion of utopian fiction, defining that genre as indeterminate.

  869.CAMPBELL-FURTICK, Cristy. “Psychological Escape in Four Novels of Margaret Atwood.” MA thesis. Tarleton State University, 1992. 113 pp. “Finding their environments threatening and malevolent, the female protagonists in The Edible Woman, Surfacing, Lady Oracle, and Life Before Man withdraw psychologically. Their psychological escapes take many forms: fantasies, alternative worlds, delusions, hallucinations, and madness. While the behavior of these protagonists is irrational and illogical to the ‘sane’ world, it allows them to reintegrate their fragmented lives. The protagonists emerge from their psychological cocoons with clarity of vision, recognizing both their multiplicity and their complicity.” (Author). For more see MAI 31.02 (Summer 1993): 569.

  870.CARPENTER, Sherida Hughes. “Revisionist Mythmaking: The Female Poet’s Break with Tradition.” MA thesis. University of Alaska, Anchorage, 1992. 108 pp. “The revisionist mythmaking conducted by women poets of the past twenty years is marked by a discerning deconstruction of cultural myth. The process involves a comprehensive revising of the entire character and/or story from a female perspective. In their poetry, revisionists trace the roots of gender problems to various cultural myths and address the contemporary concerns which have resulted. Revisionist poets most often focus on literary structures such as the fairy tale, classical myth, and religious stories. While revisionist poetry has proliferated in recent years, Margaret Atwood, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath were among the early practitioners. Their work contains prime examples of this trend.” (Author). For more see MAI 31.02 (Summer 1993): 562.

  871.CHAKOVSKY, Sergei, and M. Thomas INGE, ed. Russian Eyes on American Literature. Jackson; London: UP of Mississippi and A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature, 1992. passim. Atwood mentioned in several essays; includes discussion of her departmentalizing literature and her critique of Updike’s Witches.

  872.COLES EDITORIAL BOARD. Surfacing: Notes. Toronto: Coles, ©1992. Study guide.

  873.COOKE, Nathalie. “Reading Reflections: The Autobiographical Illusion in Cat’s Eye.” Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice. Ed. Marlene Ka-dar. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 1992. 162-170. The autobiographical element in Cat’s Eye is employed as a literary strategy by At-wood and is not simply a reflection of Atwood’s life.

  874.COWART, David. “Bridge and Mirror: Replicating Selves in Cat’s Eye.” Postmodern Fiction in Canada. Ed. Theo D’haen and Hans Bertens. Amsterdam: Ro-dopi; Antwerp: Restant: 1992. 125-136. Art and memory provide the means to examine the dimension of time, the crucial element in this novel.

  875.COX, Michele Lee. “Re-Vision as Revision: Women Narrating the Past in The Woman Warrior, Housekeeping, and Cat’s Eye.” MA thesis. University of Montana, 1992.

  876.DANIELS, Steven Robert. “In the Tracks of Gray Owl: Renaming and Transformation in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literature.” MA thesis. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1992. Focus on Atwood, as well as Robert Kroetsch and Mordecai Richler.

  877.DAVEY, Frank. “What’s in a Genre: Margaret Atwood’s ‘Notes Towards a Poem.�
�” Inside the Poem: Essays and Poems in Honor of Donald Stephens. Ed. W. H. New. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1992. 48-54. Analyzes progression from notes to poem.

  878.DEER, Glenn. “Rhetorical Strategies in The Handmaid’s Tale: Dystopia and the Paradoxes of Power.” English Studies in Canada 18.2 (June 1992): 215-233. The narrator is the powerful voice of Atwood who is responsible for the story’s pain.

  879.DESJARDINS, Louise. “Traduction de Power Politics de Margaret Atwood.” MA thesis. Université de Sherbrooke, 1992. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1992).

  880.DEVINE, Maureen. Woman and Nature: Literary Reconceptualizations. Metuchen, NJ; London: Scarecrow Press, 1992. Frequent mention of Atwood, especially Surfacing, throughout.

  881.DiBENEDETTO, Tamra Elizabeth. “The Role of Language in Constructing Consciousness in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” MA thesis. California State University, San Bernardino, 1992.

  882.DONALDSON-TOSH, Kathy. “Siren’s Song or Funeral Dirge: The White Goddess as Destroyer or Destroyed Woman in Selected Short Fiction of Margaret At-wood.” MS thesis. Illinois State University, 1992.

  883.DOPP, Jamie. “Reading through Subject-Positions: A Materialist Investigation of Subject-Positions with Readings of Three Exemplary Texts.” PhD thesis. York University, 1992. 379 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1993). A study of The Handmaid’s Tale as well as Robertson Davies’s What’s Bred in the Bone and Timothy Findley’s Famous Last Words. For more see DAI-A 54.03 (September 1993): 922.

  884.EVANS, F. E. M. (Francis Eric Mark). “Margaret Atwood: Words and the Wilderness.” PhD thesis. University of Edinburgh, 1992. This study “is motivated by a desire to demonstrate the polysemous irreducibility of literary meaning and to suggest ways in which critical theory and textual practice may meaningfully interact and correspond.” (Author). Examples used: The Circle Game, The Edible Woman, and Survival.

  885.FENWICK, Julie. “The Silence of the Mermaid: Lady Oracle and Anne of Green Gables.” Essays on Canadian Writing 47 (Fall 1992): 51-64. Points out parallels between the 2 novels regarding struggles with conventional expectations and choices for women.

  886.FOX-GENOVESE, Elizabeth. “The New Female Literary Culture.” Antioch Review 50.1-2 (Winter-Spring 1992): 260-282. “50th Anniversary Issue”; reprinted from 38.2 (Spring 1980). Survey article; compares Atwood with Gail Godwin.

  887.GARLICK, Barbara. “The Handmaid’s Tale: Narrative Voice and the Primacy of the Tale.” Twentieth-Century Fantasists: Essays on Culture, Society and Belief in Twentieth-Century Mythopoeic Literature. Ed. Kath Filmer and David Jasper. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992. 161-171.

  888.GARRETT-PETTS, W. F. “A Rhetoric of Reading Contemporary Canadian Narratives: George Bowering, Margaret Atwood, and Robert Kroetsch.” PhD thesis. University of Alberta, 1992. 264 pp. “This thesis argues for a rhetoric of reading to complement the rapid developments in text-oriented poetics that, despite a renewed interest in audience and process, continue to dominate contemporary critical discourse. A rhetoric of reading shifts the focus of critical attention from texts as aesthetic objects to texts as interactive elements in the ‘contextualized production and reception of meaning.’ This particular variation on a celebrated critical theme (that of discourse as enunciation) belongs to Linda Hutcheon, and this thesis constitutes both an elaboration and a critique of Hutcheon’s critical stance.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 53.12 (June 1993): 4327.

  889.GIOIA, Dana. Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1992. See especially “Margaret Atwood.” 186-187. Discussion of Two-Headed Poems.

  890.GIVNER, Jessie. “Names, Faces and Signatures in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and The Handmaid’s Tale.” Canadian Literature 133 (Summer 1992): 56-75. Autobiography and fiction set the relationship between the dichotomies expressed.

  891.GODARD, Barbara. “Canadian? Literary? Theory?” Open Letter, Eighth Series 3 (Spring 1992): 5-27. Atwood not always studied solely in terms of her being a Canadian author; Survival is cited in discussion of Canadian literature.

  892.HEILAND, Donna. “Postmodern Gothic: Lady Oracle and Its Eighteenth-Century Antecedents.” RSSI (Recherches sémiotiques / Semiotic Inquiry) 12.1-2 (1992): 115-136. Both the male and female traditions of the Gothic portrayal of the sublime exist in this novel and together prove that the metahistory in the eighteenth century is pointless in the twentieth.

  893.HEINIMANN, David. “An Ethical Critique of Men in Laurence and Atwood.” PhD thesis. Université de Montréal, 1992. 331 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1994). “The characterization in fiction of one sex by the other raises disputes among both. Accuracy and intent are argued to determine what the writer really meant. Agreement is difficult to achieve. Yet without it, we risk the devaluation of our literature….My examination of the novels of Margaret Laurence and Margaret Atwood, plus Laurence’s interconnected stories in A Bird in the House, concerns both the men who appear in them and what the narrators say about men. I raise questions about assumptions and intent, and I consider the consequences of the characterizations and comments.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 55.05 (January 1995): 1967.

  894.HELWIG, David. “L’autre littérature.” Possibles 16.2 (1992): 107-111. Discussion of Canadian literature with Atwood and Survival mentioned.

  895.HENDERSON, Jennifer. “Gender in the Discourse of English-Canadian Literary Criticism.” Open Letter, Eighth Series 3 (Spring 1992): 47-57. Survey article with brief mention of Atwood’s view of feminist writing.

  896.HITE, Molly. The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narrative. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992. A study of Doris Less-ing’s Golden Notebook, Alice Walker’s Color Purple, and Atwood’s Lady Oracle.

  897.HOOPER, Brad. Short Story Writers and Their Work: A Guide to the Best. 2nd ed. Chicago; London: American Library Association, 1992. 43. Guide to recommended short story collections; Atwood’s work described with particular attention to Bluebeard’s Egg.

  898.HORIKAWA, Tetsushi. “Margaret Atwood and ‘Self in Disguise’—Clothes: A Symbol of Disguise or of Reality?” Kyoto Gaikokugo Daigaku Kenkyu Ronso 39 (1992): 72-83. Clothing as a symbol of self in The Edible Woman and Surfacing.

  899.HUTCHEON, Linda, ed. Double Talking: Essays on Verbal and Visual Ironies in Canadian Contemporary Art and Literature. Toronto: ECW Press, 1992. Atwood mentioned in several essays.

  900.INGERSOLL, Earl. “Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Echoes of Orwell.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 5.4 (1992): 64-72.

  901.JOHNSTON, Susan. “Reconstructing the Wilderness: Margaret Atwood’s Reading of Susanna Moodie.” Canadian Poetry 31 (Fall-Winter 1992): 28-54. Compares Moodie’s world and the context of her writings with the interpretation of Atwood.

  902.JONES, Michelle Lynne. “Laughing Hags: The Comic Vision as Feminist.” PhD thesis. University of Alberta, 1992. 337 pp. “Feminist comedy allows writers to ‘shatter the framework of institutions’ (Cixous). Such revolutionary comedy mocks primary socialization, or the very roles or models affirmed by classic com-edy.…By examining [Atwood’s, John Irving’s, Barbara Pym’s, and Muriel Spark’s] mockery of three major ideological structures—the academy, the church, and the self—and by myself using a style reflective of such mockery, [this thesis attempts] to demonstrate the authors’ comic concern with the price paid by the individual, and society, in adhering to conservative behavior and roles. Laughter is the best medicine for the ills of society, and is especially effective in breaking the chains of socialization.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 53.12 (June 1993): 4310.

  903.KAPLAN, E. Ann. Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama. London; New York: Routledge, 1992. passim. Various references to The Handmaid’s Tale.

  904.KAUFFMAN, Linda S. Special Delivery: Epistolary Modes in Modern Fiction. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. See esp
ecially “Twenty-First Century Epistolarity in The Handmaid’s Tale.” 221-262. An earlier version appeared in Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, ©1989.

  905.KEITH, W. J. Literary Images of Ontario. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Atwood is one of many writers presented and is especially predominant in the chapter “A Changing Toronto,” where the use of the city in her fiction is discussed.

  906.KETTERER, David. Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Bloomington, IL; Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1992. See especially “The International Arrival of Canadian Science Fiction. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: A Contextual Dystopia.” 147-154. Terms The Handmaid’s Tale a “contextual dystopia” because of its transitory nature with the “Historical Notes” indicating that Gilead did not last; in this sense, the novel differs from the traditional dystopian tale.

  907.KIRTZ, Mary K. “‘I Am Become a Name’: The Representation of Ukrainians in Ross, Laurence, Ryga and Atwood.” Canadian Ethnic Studies / Études Ethniques au Canada 24.2 (1992): 35-45. The power of naming is explored in four novels including Life Before Man.

  908.KRÖLLER, Eva-Marie. George Bowering: Bright Circles of Colour. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1992. passim. Four brief references to Atwood, including description of Charles Pachter’s cover for The Gangs of Kosmos in which Atwood’s image appears.

  909.KRUK, Laurie Ann. “Voices of the ‘Concerned Middle’: The Short Stories of Six Canadian Women Writers.” PhD thesis. University of Western Ontario, 1992. 317 pp. This “thesis, feminist in approach, examines voices of the ‘concerned middle’ through the ‘female fictions’ of six contemporary inheritors of the realist tradition in Canadian literature. With their short stories, Edna Alford, Sandra Birdsell, Joan Clark, Elisabeth Harvor, Carol Shields and Janette Turner Hospital continue the exploration of women’s experience in patriarchal society initiated by Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 54.02 (August 1993): 526.