Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  1103. BOUSON, J. Brooks. Brutal Choreographies: Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of Margaret Atwood. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993. 204. Atwood’s first 7 novels reveal a common use of narrative forms to enact her psychological and political themes.

  1104. BRADFORD, Kelly Jean. “Margaret Atwood: The Significance of Storytelling.” MA thesis. Western Illinois University, 1993.

  1105. CARRINGTON, Ildikó de Papp. “Margaret Atwood (1939– ).” ECW’s Biographical Guide to Canadian Novelists. Ed. Robert Lecker, Jack David, and Ellen Quig-ley. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993. 239-243. Biographical sketch.

  1106. CHANDLER, Joel C. “Gender and the Search for Meaning in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Thomas McGuane’s Ninety-Two in the Shade.” MA thesis. Georgia State University, 1993.

  1107. CHANDRA, Suresh. “Women’s Liberation in the Fiction of Margaret Atwood and Shashi Deshpande.” Meerut Journal of Comparative Literature and Language 6.2 (1993): 77-85.

  1108. CLARK, Miriam Marty. “After Epiphany: American Stories in the Postmodern Age.” Style 27.3 (Fall 1993): 387-94. Selfhood and meaning in Atwood and American writers are examined.

  1109. CLAYTON, Jay. The Pleasures of Babel: Contemporary American Literature and Theory. New York; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. passim. References to Bodily Harm and Surfacing.

  1110. COLES EDITORIAL BOARD. The Edible Woman. Notes. Toronto: Coles, ©1993. 121 pp. Study notes.

  1111. CONBOY, Sheila C. “Scripted, Conscripted, and Circumscribed: Body Language in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and Ambivalence in Narrative by Women. Ed. Carol J. Singley and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. 349-362. Reading and language, grounded in the body, are oppressive for women rather than expressive.

  1112. CONDÉ, Mary. “The Male Immigrant in Two Canadian Stories.” Kunapipi 15.1 (1993): 103-109. Alice Munro’s “Oranges and Apples” and Margaret Atwood’s “Wilderness Tips.”

  1113. ______. “Visible Immigrants in Three Canadian Women’s Fictions of the Nineties.” Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies: Revue Interdisciplinaire des études canadiennes en France 19.34 (1993): 91-100. Atwood’s “Wilderness Tips” set off against Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café and Alice Munro’s “Oranges and Apples.”

  1114. CROSBIE, Lynn. “Like a Hook into a Cat’s Eye: Locating Margaret Atwood’s Susie.” Tessera 15 (1993): 30-41.

  1115. CROWDER, Diane Griffin. “Separatism and Feminist Utopian Fiction.” Sexual Practice / Textual Theory: Lesbian Cultural Criticism. Ed. Susan J. Wolfe and Julia Penelope. Cambridge, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. 244-245. Dystopian visions are examined in The Handmaid’s Tale.

  1116. CUDER-DOMINGUEZ, Pilar. “La Narrativa de Margaret Atwood como romance.” PhD thesis. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 1993. 362 pp.

  1117. DAVEY, Frank. Post-National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone-Canadian Novel since 1967. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 1993. See especially “Individualist Nationalism: Cat’s Eye.” 223-239. Develops chapter’s thesis based on localisms found in the novel.

  1118. DeBOER, Ron B. “Margaret Atwood and the Cultural Landscape.” MA thesis. University of Waterloo, 1993. 97 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1993). “In the context of this paper’s problematization of modern advertising, gender roles within advertising, and culture at large, Atwood’s feminist agenda in works from The Circle Game to Good Bones continues to discover truths about the role of women in society. Atwood problematizes women’s positions in society, drawing in her works images of entrapment, dismemberment, immobility, and binary oppositions in meaning between head and the body. While many of Atwood’s characters ‘emerge’ from her novels with greater understanding and realization, all are constructs of a male-empowered consumer marketplace which emits violent sexual imagery, whether through glamorized rape scenes in advertising or commonplace notions about pornography portrayed as acceptable. Finally, the premise of this paper is to show that modern society’s insistence that women have the freedom to do as they please is a thin veneer, strategically coated by a consumer-based power structure that, in fact, ensnares women attempting to live out an ideal of freedom. Atwood’s Gileadian society in Handmaid’s Tale serves as true freedom to women, a freedom from the constraints and entrapments of cosmetic surgery, make-up, fashion consciousness, weight-loss obsession and sexual violence.” (Author). For more see MAI 32.01 (February 1994): 56.

  1119. DUNCKER, Patricia. “Heterosexuality: Fictional Agendas.” Heterosexuality: A Feminism and Psychology Reader. Ed. Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger. London; Newbury Park; New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993. 137-149. Life Before Man, The Edible Woman, and Jenny Diski’s Nothing Natural are examined with regard to heterosexuality as a social and sexual institution.

  1120. DURIX, Carole, and Jean-Pierre DURIX. An Introduction to the New Literatures in English. Paris: Longman France, 1993. 206 pp. Section on Atwood (151-154) provides an introduction to her work as an important Canadian writer.

  1121. EPSTEIN, Grace A. “Bodily Harm: Female Containment and Abuse in the Romance Narrative.” Genders 16 (Spring 1993): 80-93. A meaningful narrative is constructed over the romance narrative as Rennie struggles for control of her body and her story.

  1122. ______. “Nothing to Fight For: Repression of the Romance Plot in Harold Pinter’s Screenplay of The Handmaid’s Tale.” Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1992-93. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa, FL: University of Tampa Press, 1993. 54-60.

  1123. FARWELL, Marilyn R. “Toward a Definition of the Lesbian Literary Imagination.” Sexual Practice / Textual Theory: Lesbian Cultural Criticism. Ed. Susan J. Wolfe and Julia Penelope. Cambridge, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. 66. A mention of Atwood’s review of Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck.

  1124. FEE, Margery. The Fat Lady Dances: Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993. 95. Presents background to novel and summary of its critical reception as well as exploring the novel’s themes and issues.

  1125. FILIPCZAK, Dorota. “Is There No Balm in Gilead? Biblical Intertext in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Literature and Theology 7.2 (June 1993): 171-185. Traces the use of Gilead in the Bible and its associations that appear in The Handmaid’s Tale to see whether it is used to enforce the structure of that society or whether the society is a consequence of the Biblical reality.

  1126. FINNELL, Susanna. “Unwriting the Quest: Margaret Atwood’s Fiction and The Handmaid’s Tale.” Women and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience. Ed. Bonnie Frederick and Susan H. McLeod. Pullman: Washington State UP, 1993. 199-215. The traditional quest/journey motif takes on a new subject, the female, in Atwood’s novels, especially The Handmaid’s Tale.

  1127. FRYE, Northrop. The Eternal Act of Creation: Essays, 1979-1990. Ed. Robert D. Denham. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1993. Atwood’s poem “Journey to the Interior” is briefly discussed in essay titled “Levels of Cultural Identity” (177); Atwood quoted in “Introduction” (xvii-xviii) as to the great influence Frye had upon Canadian literature.

  1128. GADPAILLE, Michelle. “Odalisques in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 8.3 (1993): 221-226. Odalisques are examined as a metaphor for sexual and imperial domination in Cat’s Eye. [Ed. note: An odalisque was a female slave or concubine in the Ottoman seraglio, tending to the harem of the Turkish sultan. The word appears in a French form, and originates from the Turkish odalık, meaning “chambermaid,” from oda, “chamber” or “room.” Various writers spell the word as odahlic, odalisk, and odaliq. An odalisque was not a concubine of the harem, but she could possibly become one. Odalisques were the virgin slaves of the harem, where they were at the bottom of the social ladder, serving not the sultan himself but rather his concubines and wives as personal chambermaids.]

  1129. GERNES, Sonia. North American Women Writers: Spirit and Society. [Video-recording].
Florence, KY: Brenzel Pub.; Chicago: Public Media Education, 1993. VHS tape, 2 videocassettes (170 min.). On the tape, Professor Sonia Gernes discusses 6 women authors—Edith Wharton, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Margaret Atwood—reviewing their work and highlighting important themes.

  1130. GERRY, Thomas M. F. Contemporary Canadian and U.S. Women of Letters: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993. Includes Atwood.

  1131. GREENE, Gayle, Ann Rosalind JONES, and Linda S. KAUFFMAN, eds. Changing Subjects: The Making of Feminist Literary Criticism. London; New York: Routledge, 1993. Passing mention of Atwood in chapters by Gayle Greene

  1132. GRIFFIN, Gabriele. The Influence of the Writings of Simone Weil on the Fiction of Iris Murdoch. San Francisco: Mellen Research UP, 1993. 49-50. The Handmaid’s Tale and Surfacing are cited, the former as an example of differences between men and women and the latter as an example of rebirth.

  1133. GROENING, Laura Smith. E. K. Brown: A Study in Conflict. Toronto; Buffalo, NY; London: University of Toronto Press, 1993. 90, 118. Brief mention of Margaret Atwood.

  1134. HENGEN, Shannon. Margaret Atwood’s Power: Mirrors, Reflections and Images in Select Fiction and Poetry. Toronto: Second Story Press, 1993.

  1135. HERMES, Liesel. “Modern Women Writers: Versuch Einer Einführung.” Neusprachliche Mitteilungen aus Wissenschaft und Praxis 46.4 (1993): 217-227. Includes discussion of Atwood’s “Happy Endings.”

  1136. HERNDL, Diane Price. Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840-1940. Chapel Hill; London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Uses quote from The Handmaid’s Tale (“An invalid, one who has been invalidated”) as forequote to “Introduction” and as discussion in summary on page 218 to define nuance of title.

  1137. HOLTZE, Elizabeth A. “Sirens and Their Song.” Woman’s Power, Man’s Game: Essays on Classical Antiquity in Honor of Joy K. King. Ed. Mary DeForest. Wau-conda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1993. 392-414. Cites “Siren Song” and “Circe/Mud Poems” to illustrate that the Siren tells the story from her perspective rather than from the male adventurer; this changes one’s view of the singers and suggests that women poets will offer a different interpretation.

  1138. HORNE, Helen Marion. “Revisionist Mythmaking: The Use of the Fairy Tale Motif in the Works of Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood and Anne Sexton.” MLitt thesis. University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1993. 123 pp.

  1139. HOWELLS, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale: Notes. Beirut: York Press; Harlow: Longman, 1993. 88. Cover title: York Notes on The Handmaid’s Tale.

  1140. HUTCHEON, Linda. “Eruptions of Postmodernity: The Postcolonial and the Ecological.” Essays on Canadian Writing 51-52 (Winter 1993-Spring 1994): 146-163. Discussion of Canada’s identity; Survival briefly mentioned.

  1141. INGERSOLL, Earl. “Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Echoes of Orwell.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 5.3 (1993): 64-72. Compares Offred and Winston as narrators.

  1142. IRVINE, Lorna. Collecting Clues: Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993. 113 pp. Presents background to novel and summary of its critical reception as well as exploring the novel’s themes and issues.

  1143. JACKSON, Kevin. “The Trappings of Disaster.” Sight and Sound 3.5 (May 1993): 38-39. Critical essay on science-fiction films with references to The Handmaid’s Tale.

  1144. JEFFRIES, Lesley. The Language of Twentieth-Century Poetry. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. 102. Atwood poem, “Woman Skating,” very briefly analyzed in chapter, “Grammatical Structure.”

  1145. JORGENSEN, Mary Crew. “The Voices of Mothers and Daughters in Three Novels by Margaret Atwood.” MA thesis. University of South Dakota. 1993. 65 pp.

  1146. KANAAR, Kay. “A Comparison of Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Text, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Catherine Helen Spence’s Utopian Text, Handfasted.” MA thesis. University of Wollongong, 1993.

  1147. KING, Bruce. “Introduction: A Changing Face.” The Later Fiction of Nadine Gor-dimer. Ed. Bruce King. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. 10. Mention of At-wood with comment that Atwood and Gordimer relationship worthy of further study.

  1148. LANCASHIRE, Ian. “Computer-Assisted Critical Analysis: A Case Study of Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.” The Digital Word: Text-Based Computing in the Humanities. Ed. George P. Landow and Paul Delany. Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 1993. 293-318. An analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale, novel and screenplay, by TACT, a computerized text retrieval and analysis tool, suggests that computer programs like this help critics give a more objective review of a work.

  1149. LANE, R. D. “Cordelia’s ‘Nothing’: The Character of Cordelia and Margaret At-wood’s Cat’s Eye.” Essays on Canadian Writing 48 (Winter 1992-93): 73-88. The concept of nothing is present in both King Lear and Cat’s Eye and represents both unlimited possibilities and desperate isolation.

  1150. LANE, Richard. “Anti-Panoptical Narrative Structures in Two Novels by Margaret Atwood.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 16.1 (Autumn 1993): 63-69. Discusses memory-narratives in Cat’s Eye and Surfacing.

  1151. LeBIHAN, Jill. “The Conditions of a Documentary Genre: Nineteenth-Century Documents in the Writing of Contemporary Canadian Women (with Particular Reference to Margaret Atwood’s The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners, Susan Swan’s The Biggest Modern Woman of the World and Daphne Marlatt’s Ana Historic).” PhD thesis. University of Leeds, 1993. 311 pp.

  1152. LECKER, Robert. “Privacy, Publicity, and the Discourse of Canadian Criticism.” Essays on Canadian Writing 51-52 (Winter 1993-Spring 1994): 32-82. Survival is described as a book of criticism that is addressed to the public; for this reason it is attacked by the critics, theorizes Lecker.

  1153. LONGO, Maria Luisa. “La città di Margaret Atwood.” Doctoral thesis. Università degli studi della Basilicata, Potenza, 1993. 199 pp.

  1154. LOPEZ, Barbara Leaman. “Typers. (Original composition).” MA thesis. San Jose State University, 1993. 53 pp. “This thesis develops the poem ‘A Place: Fragments’ by Margaret Atwood.” (Author). For more see MAI 31.04 (Winter 1993): 1422.

  1155. MACKLIN, Lisa A. “Feminism in the Selected Science Fiction Novels of Margaret Atwood and Marge Piercy.” MA thesis. Texas Woman’s University, 1993. 99 pp. “The rise of the women’s movement is paralleled by an increased recognition of writing by women. Science fiction, although previously dominated by male themes, allows feminist writers to create new societies without the restraints of tradition.” (Author). For more see MAI 32.03 (June 1994): 805.

  1156. MacLENNAN, Jennifer Margaret. “The Gift of Voice: The Role of Self-Projection in the Rhetorical Appeal of Margaret Atwood’s Nonfiction.” PhD thesis. University of Washington, 1993. 293 pp. “The projection of self through discourse is, as Aristotle argued, a significant aspect of effective rhetorical appeal. Nevertheless, the study of this dimension of written discourse has been complicated by modern critical assumptions and the parallel notion of literary persona. This dissertation attempts to set ethos and persona into the broader framework of voice and to establish a coherent critical method for approaching voice in literary nonfiction, before moving on to demonstrate its contribution to the rhetorical force of Margaret At-wood’s nonfiction prose.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 54.01 (January 1994): 2584.

  1157. MALLINSON, Jean. “Margaret Atwood (1939- ).” ECW’s Biographical Guide to Canadian Poets. Ed. Robert Lecker, Jack David, and Ellen Quigley. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993. 247-249. Biographical sketch.

  1158. MASEL, C. “Late Landings: Reflections on Belatedness in Australian and Canadian Literature.” Recasting the World: Writing after Colonialism. Ed. Jonathan White. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. 161-189. About Margaret At-wood as well as David Malouf.

  1159. MEINDL, Dieter. “Between Eliot and Atwood: Faulkner as Ecologist.” Faulkner, His Contemporaries, and His Posterity. Ed. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. Tüb
ingen: Francke, 1993. 301-308.

  1160. MILINDER, Le’Ann. “Margaret Atwood’s Evaluation of Friendship between Women: From Lady Oracle to Cat’s Eye.” ALM thesis. Harvard University, 1993. 81 pp.

  1161. MONTELARO, Janet J. “Discourses of Maternity and the Postmodern Narrative: A Study of Lessing, Walker, and Atwood.” PhD thesis. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1993. 402 pp. “Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale are narrated by women whose social identities are partially constructed through activities traditionally associated with mothering….In The Handmaid’s Tale, the patriarchal society of Gilead equates women’s sexuality with the reproductive-maternal function. Read according to Luce Irigaray’s critique of phallogocentrism, Atwood’s novel exposes the role of scopophilia in Gilead’s subordination of women and its regulation of their sexuality. Visual metaphors such as the convex mirror and its reflection of masculinity in the pregnant Handmaid signify the repression of the feminine. Atwood’s textual echoes of John Ashbery’s ‘Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,’ like Irigaray’s subversive mimicry, serve to deconstruct the specular logic of Gilead’s patriarchy.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 54.08 (February 1994): 3043.

  1162. MONTRESOR, Jaye Berman, ed. The Critical Response to Ann Beattie. Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press, 1993. passim. Brief mentions of Atwood in several essays.

  1163. MOODY, Gayle Lawson. “The Quest for Selfhood: Women in the Novels of Margaret Atwood.” PhD thesis. Baylor University, 1993. 182 pp. “Anthropological studies show that the role the patriarchy has created for women arose from man’s knowledge of his paternity and from his need for offspring to inherit property he had accumulated….Focusing on the novels of Atwood, this dissertation examines the female characters in Atwood’s novels and the roles they choose to occupy or the roles they attempt to create for themselves. The first role examined is that of the oppressive mother or substitute mother. The second role examined is the one occupied by women who attempt to usurp the male subject position. And the final role examined is the one created by women who define an individual sense of selfhood. These women who create their own identities are more productive than those who accept defined roles.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 54.11 (May 1994): 4097.