Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  3669. COOKE, Nathalie, ed. Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. In a text that can be read by serious high school students, Cooke, the author of Margaret Atwood: A Biography (Toronto: ECW Press, 1998), covers Atwood in 8 chapters. In the 1st she supplies a short biography (1-18); in the 2nd she discusses her Canadian nationalist/feminist/post-modern literary heritage (19-29); in the 3rd The Edible Women (31-52); in the 4th Surfacing (53-78); in the 5th Lady Oracle (79-95); in the 6th Cat’s Eye (97-112); in the 7th The Handmaid’s Tale (113-135); and in the 8th The Blind Assassin (137-155). There is also an extensive bibliography, not all of which is on Atwood directly (157-167).

  3670. COOPER, Pamela. “Pamala [sic] Cooper on Voyeurism and the Filming of The Handmaid’s Tale.” Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 93-95. Excerpt from “Sexual Surveillance and Medical Authority in Two Versions of The Handmaid’s Tale.” Journal of Popular Culture 28.4 (Spring 1995): 49-61.

  3671. DARROCH, Heidi. “Hysteria and Dramatic Testimony: Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.” Essays on Canadian Writing 81 (2004): 103-121. Atwood’s first historical novel, Alias Grace, is concerned in part with the relationship between trauma and confessional discourse. The novel’s depiction of a convicted “murderess” as a trauma survivor with a complex and painful story to tell allows Atwood a means to investigate both 19th-century and 20th-century theories of traumatic memory and amnesia. In the process, Atwood raises questions about the reliability of both autobiographical memories and historical narratives.

  3672. DAVIDSON, Arnold E. “Arnold Davidson on ‘Historical Notes’”: Margaret At-wood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 85-88. Excerpt from “Future Tense: Making History in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 114-115, 120-121.

  3673. DEER, Glenn. “Glenn Deer on Sanctioned Narrative Authority.” Margaret At-wood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 90-91. Excerpt from “The Handmaid’s Tale: Dystopia and the Paradoxes of Power.” Margaret Atwood. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 93-112. Reprinted from Post-Modern Canadian Fiction and the Rhetoric of Authority. Montreal: McGill-Queens UP, 1994.

  3674. DJWA, Sandra. “P. K. Page: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman.” Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue d’études canadiennes 38.1 (2004): 9-22. Includes an analysis of how Page’s early poetry and prose influenced later writers such as Margaret Atwood.

  3675. DOPP, Jamie. “Jamie Dopp on Limited Perspective.” Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 92-93. Excerpt from “Subject-Position as Victim-Position in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Studies in Canadian Literature 19.1 (1994): 43-57.

  3676. EHRENREICH, Barbara. “On Feminist Dystopia.” Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 78-80. Excerpt from “Feminism’s Phantoms: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret At-wood.” New Republic 17 March 1986: 33-35.

  3677. FEUER, Lois. “Lois Feuer on The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984.” Margaret At-wood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 97-100. Excerpt from “The Calculus of Love and Nightmare: The Handmaid’s Tale and the Dystopian Tradition.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 38.2 (1997): 83-95.

  3678. GARDINER, Anne Barbeau. “The Interrelated Defense of Abortion and Pornography in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Life and Learning XIII: Proceedings of the Thirteenth University Faculty for Life Conference at Georgetown University 2003. Ed. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Washington, DC: University Faculty for Life [Georgetown University], 2004. 87-101.

  3680. GRABENHORST, Tina. “A Mitten of Bird (with Original Writing, Poetry).” MA thesis. University of Windsor, 2004. 108 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (2005). This thesis project consists of two sections: the first is a collection of the author’s own poetry, chiefly lyric, but also narrative and confessional, written for this project; the second is a paper on her poetics, in which she explores ecopoetry, with a focus on how her work fits within the genre both stylistically and thematically, and on her own writing in relation to other poets on the subject of nature, including Margaret Atwood. For more see MAI 43.01 (February 2005): 58.

  3681. GRACE, Sherrill. Inventing Tom Thomson: From Biographical Fictions to Fictional Autobiographies and Reproductions. Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queens, 2004. Includes numerous references to Atwood.

  3682. GRIFFITHS, Anthony. “Genetics According to Oryx and Crake.” Canadian Literature / Littérature canadienne 181 (2004): 192-195.

  3683. GRONEWOLD, Laura. “Margaret Atwood’s Evil Women in Lady Oracle, Cat’s Eye, and The Robber Bride.” MA thesis. University of Montana–Missoula, 2004.

  3684. HEILAND, Donna. Gothic & Gender. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. See especially Chapter 8, “Feminist, Postmodern, Postcolonial: Margaret Atwood and Ann-Marie MacDonald Respond to the Gothic,” 156-179. Published in a different form as “Postmodern Gothic: Lady Oracle and its Eighteenth Century Antecedents.” RSSI (Recherches sémiotiques / Semiotic Inquiry) 12.1-2 (1992): 115-136. This chapter also includes a discussion of The Blind Assassin.

  3685. HILL, Colin. “Atwood, Margaret Eleanor (1939– ).” Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Twentieth Century, 1914-2000. Ed. John Powell. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. 24-25. Enumerates without proof the authors who have influenced Atwood.

  3686. HILTON, Lisa. “From the Lilac House.” MALS thesis. State University of New York–Empire State College, 2004. “The journey theme is explored through the creation of a poetry manuscript, From the Lilac House. This is accomplished through research of the way this theme is carried out in particular mythological tales, historical texts, and travel essays. The poetry of Margaret Atwood, Basho, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Pablo Neruda is also considered with attention to how the poets create a sense of place. The creative process is discussed in terms of a journey, tracing the development of poems through inspiration and revision to the final version.” (Author). For more see MAI 42.06 (December 2004): 1969.

  3687. HORLACHER, Stefan. “Daniel Martin, America, Faith in Fakes / Travels in Hy-perreality und das Verschwinden der Realität-Überlegungen zum Antizipa-torischen Potential von Literatur.” Beyond Extremes: Repräsentation und Reflexion von Modernisierungsprozessen im Zeitgenössischen Britischen Roman. Ed. Stefan Glomb and Stefan Horlacher. Tübingen: Narr, 2004. 291-329. John Fowles’s Daniel Martin set off against Atwood’s The Edible Woman, both within their cultural context.

  3688. HOWELLS, Coral Ann. “Margaret Atwood: Alias Grace.” Where Are the Voices Coming From? Canadian Culture and the Legacies of History. Ed. Coral Ann Howells. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. 29-37.

  3689. INGERSOLL, Earl G. “Survival in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 45.2 (2004): 162-175.

  3690. KETTERER, David. “‘Another Dimension of Space’: Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy and Atwood’s Blind Assassin.” Worlds of Wonder: Readings in Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. Ed. Jean-François Leroux and Camille R. La Bossière. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2004. 8-34.

  3691. KOROLCZUK, Elizabeth. “One Woman Leads to Another: Female Identity in the Works of Margaret Atwood.” American Studies (Warsaw) 21 (2004): 35-51.

  3692. KU, Chung-hao. “Eating, Cleaning, and Writing: Female Abjection and Subjectivity in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 30.1 (January 2004): 93-129.

  3693. KYSER, Kristina. “Reading Canada Biblically: A Study of Biblical Allusion and the Construction of Nation in Contemporary Canadian Writing.” PhD thesis. University of Toronto, 2004. 229 pp. “This is a study of the use of biblical allusion by Canadian thematic criti
cs of the 1960s and ’70s and by Canadian novelists writing in the 1990s and following. It examines the manner in which Canada has been constructed through such allusions over the last four decades. In doing this it addresses, from a new perspective, several issues that have long been relevant to the study of literature in Canada, including the definition of ‘Canadian’ and the related importance of nationalism. The argument is ordered around four central biblical events (Creation, the Deluge, the Incarnation, and the Crucifixion).” (Author). The texts considered include writings of critics such as Atwood. For more see DAI-A 65.10 (April 2005): 3812.

  3694. LOUDERMILK, Kim A. Fictional Feminism: How American Bestsellers Affect the Movement for Women’s Equality. New York: Routledge, 2004. See especially Chapter 5, “‘Consider the Alternatives’: Feminism and Ambivalence in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale,” 123-148. Argues that the book betrays a profound ambivalence towards certain tendencies in feminist theory and practice.

  3695. MacPHERSON, Heidi Slettedahl. “Prison, Passion, and the Female Gaze: Twentieth-Century Representations of Nineteenth-Century Panopticons.” In the Grip of the Law: Trials, Prisons and the Space Between. Ed. Monica Fluderniok and Greta Olson. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2004. 205-221. References to Alias Grace.

  3696. MALAK, Amin. “Amin Malak on Atwood in the Dystopian Tradition.” Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 82-84. Excerpt from “Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and the Dystopian Tradition.” Canadian Literature 112 (Spring 1987): 9-11, 15.

  3697. MANGUEL, Alberto. A Reading Diary. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004. Includes Atwood’s Surfacing, which was read during April 2003. 175-188.

  3698. MASSOURA, Kiriaki. “‘I Look at It and See My Life Entire’: Language, Third-Eye Vision and Painting in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” British Journal of Canadian Studies 17:2 (2004): 210-223.

  3699. ______. “Margaret Atwood: Ena Psifidoto Erotismou, Ponou Kai Epiviosis.” (Margaret Atwood: A Mosaic of Eroticism, Pain, and Survival). Diavazo 450 (2004): 96-102.

  3700. McCARTHY, E. “Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman.” PhD thesis. Bristol University, 2004. “This thesis examines Margaret Atwood’s work in the context of the complex history of the Bildungsroman, or novel of personal devel-opment….[It] demonstrates that Atwood’s early work, her own ‘coming of age’ fiction The Edible Woman (1969), Lady Oracle (1976), and her collection of short stories, Dancing Girls (1977), both engage with and work against the ideas of unity of identity which are traditionally associated with the genre….It examines the ways in which Atwood’s later novels, namely Cat’s Eye (1988), The Robber Bride (1993), and The Blind Assassin (2000) revisit and develop the formulations of selfhood and identity put forward in her early fiction. It goes on to survey the Canadian female Bildungsroman in English since the late 1970s, considering At-wood’s influence on these later developments.” (Author).

  3701. MUNDLER, Helen E. “Heritage, Pseudo-Heritage and Survival in a Spurious Wor(l)d: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 27.1 (2004): 89-98.

  3702. NEWLAND, Nancy. “Journeys of Self-Transformation in Contemporary Literature.” MALS thesis. State University of New York–Empire State College, 2004. 72 pp. “This study’s objective is to follow the development and maturation of three characters in contemporary literature in order to gain insight into the process of self-development using Quoyle from The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, Iris Chase Griffen from Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, and Sister John from Lying Awake by Mark Salzman. It presents a discussion of how literature reflects life and why fictional characters can be considered real people. The tools of interpretation used to analyze the characters’ life journeys include concepts of the psychology of being by Abraham Maslow and John Welwood, the tale of Cupid and Psyche and its implications in the development of conscious relationship, insights into literature by Carolyn Heilbrun and Ian Watt, and the role of mysticism and epilepsy in contemplative life.” (Author). For more see MAI 42.05 (October 2004): 1484.

  3703. OATES-INDRUCHOVÁ, Libora. “Initiation Motives in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride.” Theory and Practice in English Studies. Ed. Pavel Drábek and Jan Chovanec. Brno: Masaryk University, 2004. 127-134.

  3704. PARKIN-GOUNELAS, Ruth. “‘What Isn’t There’ in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin: The Psychoanalysis of Duplicity.” Modern Fiction Studies 50.3 Fall (2004): [681]-700. Atwood’s The Blind Assassin has to do with memory as retrospection, temporality being figured spatio-materially, with the emphasis on vision. In attempting to “fix” time through an obsessive elaboration of material objects, the novel foregrounds the lure and deception of the visual, the way images, like symbols, function, to stand in for what isn’t there. Images of duplicity or doubling, encapsulated in the photo of the two often indistinguishable sisters, torn in half, suggest a return to that moment of simultaneous self-identity and self-alienation in the mirror, described by Lacan as a violent “tearing” between self and other, a perpetual (self-) assassination.

  3705. RIDOUT, Alice Rachel. “‘To Be and Not to Be’: The Politics of Parody in Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe).” PhD thesis. University of Toronto, 2004. 259 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (2005). “Parody enables these writers to position themselves simultaneously inside and outside discourse, a position Carolyn Heilbrun identifies particularly with women and captures in the image of the threshold. Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Doris Lessing are all on the threshold or margin of their national cultures….In my thesis, I show how Margaret Atwood uses parody to negotiate contradictory contemporary models of subjectivity. In Lady Oracle, Joan succeeds in telling her life story through self-parody….Parody emphasizes process as it takes finished texts and turns them into part of the process of creating a new text. Atwood’s and Lessing’s highly self-reflexive novels, The Blind Assassin and The Golden Notebook, exploit this aspect of parody to reflect the incessant process of writing a woman’s life.” (Author). For more see DAI-A 65.05 (November 2004): 1776.

  3706. ROUSSELOT, E. “Re-writing Women into Canadian History: Margaret Atwood and Anne Hébert.” PhD thesis. University of Kent, 2004. The Journals of Susanna Moodie as well as Alias Grace among works examined.

  3707. SHURBUTT, Sylvia Bailey. “Margaret Atwood, 1939– .” World Writers in English, Vol. 1: Chinua Achebe to V. S. Naipaul. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Scrib-ner’s, 2004. 59-80.

  3708. SIDDALL, Gillian. “‘This Is What I Told Dr. Jordan...’ Public Constructions and Private Disruptions in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.” Essays on Canadian Writing 81 (2004): 84-102. Atwood’s historical novel Alias Grace includes a number of excerpts from the public media of the day in which Grace Marks is discursively constructed not just as a murderer but also as someone who strays from normative femininity—as a violent deviant who fails to live up to her feminine role as purveyor of moral values and keeper of the domestic realm. This article explores the ways in which Atwood’s Grace critiques these ideologies and disrupts public discourses of class and gender.

  3709. SOLECKI, Sam, ed. Yours, Al: The Collected Letters of Al Purdy. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour: 2004. Includes correspondence by and about Atwood.

  3710. STAELS, Hilde. “Atwood’s Specular Narrative: The Blind Assassin.” English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 85.2 April (2004): 147-160.

  3711. STEIN, Karen. “Karen Stein on Frame and Discourse.” Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 95-97. Excerpt from “Margaret Atwood’s Modest Proposal: The Handmaid’s Tale.” Canadian Literature 148 (Spring 1996): 69-70.

  3712. STEVENSON, Sharon. “The Nature of ‘Outsider Dystopias’: Atwood, Starhhawk, and Abbey.” The Utopian Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Twentieth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Ed. Martha A. Bartter. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. 129-1
36. Paper originally delivered in 1999.

  3713. STIMPSON, Catharine R. “On ‘Atwood Woman.’” Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 80-81. Excerpt from “Atwood Woman.” The Nation 31 May 1986: 764-765.

  3714. TOLAN, Fiona. “Connecting Theory and Fiction: Margaret Atwood’s Novels and Second Wave Feminism.” PhD thesis. University of Durham, 2004. 307 pp. “This thesis undertakes an examination of the manner in which a novelist interacts with a contemporary theoretical discourse. I argue that the novelist and the theoretical discourse enter into a symbiotic relationship in which each influences and is influenced by the other. This process, I suggest, is simultaneous and complex. The thesis demonstrates how the prevailing theoretical discourse is absorbed by the contemporary author, is developed and redefined in conjunction with alternative concerns, and comes to permeate the narrative in an altered state. The novelist’s new perspectives, frequently problematising theoretical claims, are then disseminated by the novel, promoting further discussion and development of the theoretical discourse.” (Author).

  3715. TRIGG, Tina. “Casting Shadows: A Study of Madness in Margaret Atwood’s Novels.” PhD thesis. University of Ottawa, 2004. 432 pp. “Madness is a recurrent aspect of Margaret Atwood’s novels to date and represents perhaps her most discomforting challenge to the reader who is implicated as co-creator, interpreter, and participant of the fiction….The particular areas of investigation include: Atwood’s comical representation of psychology as a prominent undercurrent of popular culture in The Edible Woman, and her contrasting serious—even threatening— portrayal of normative limits as social constructs in Bodily Harm. With regard to the individual, Lady Oracle exhibits the role of fantasy in psychic balance and posits the protagonist as an unlikely manifestation of ‘normality.’ Although still focused on the individual, Life Before Man represents the converse: the capacity for fantasy is lost in the dissociated condition of ‘normalized’ characters. The Jungian process of individuation is studied through the projection of one’s shadow figure in The Robber Bride. Finally, Atwood’s most direct and strategic implication of the reader in determining the variable boundaries of (in)sanity is examined in Alias Grace.” (Author). For more see DAI-AI 64.10 (April 2004): 3692-3693.