Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman

Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman PDF Author: Ellen McWilliams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351919938
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Examining Margaret Atwood's work in the context of the complex history of the Bildungsroman, Ellen McWilliams explores how the genre has been appropriated by women writers in the second half of the twentieth century. She demonstrates that Atwood's early work - her own 'coming of age' fiction, including unpublished works as well as The Edible Woman, Surfacing, and Lady Oracle - both engages with and works against the paradigms of identity which are traditionally associated with the genre. Making extensive use of unpublished manuscripts in the Atwood Collection at the University of Toronto, McWilliams uncovers influences that shaped Atwood's fashioning of identity in her early novels, paying particular attention to Atwood's preoccupation with survival as a key symbol of Canadian literature, culture, and identity. She also considers the genre's afterlife on display in Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and Moral Disorder, in which the formulations of selfhood and identity in Atwood's early fiction are revisited and developed. Atwood emerges as a writer who self-consciously invokes and then undercuts the traditions of the Bildungsroman, a turn that may be read as a means of at once interrogating and perpetuating the form. McWilliams's book furthers our understanding of subjectivity in Atwood's fiction and contributes to ongoing conversations about the role gender and cultural contexts play in reframing generic boundaries.

Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman

Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman PDF Author: Ellen McWilliams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351919938
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Examining Margaret Atwood's work in the context of the complex history of the Bildungsroman, Ellen McWilliams explores how the genre has been appropriated by women writers in the second half of the twentieth century. She demonstrates that Atwood's early work - her own 'coming of age' fiction, including unpublished works as well as The Edible Woman, Surfacing, and Lady Oracle - both engages with and works against the paradigms of identity which are traditionally associated with the genre. Making extensive use of unpublished manuscripts in the Atwood Collection at the University of Toronto, McWilliams uncovers influences that shaped Atwood's fashioning of identity in her early novels, paying particular attention to Atwood's preoccupation with survival as a key symbol of Canadian literature, culture, and identity. She also considers the genre's afterlife on display in Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and Moral Disorder, in which the formulations of selfhood and identity in Atwood's early fiction are revisited and developed. Atwood emerges as a writer who self-consciously invokes and then undercuts the traditions of the Bildungsroman, a turn that may be read as a means of at once interrogating and perpetuating the form. McWilliams's book furthers our understanding of subjectivity in Atwood's fiction and contributes to ongoing conversations about the role gender and cultural contexts play in reframing generic boundaries.

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood PDF Author: Helene Greven
Publisher: Didier-Erudition
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
The Handmaid's Tale (1985), by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, revisits the Anglo-American utopian/dystopian tradition. Appealing to imaginative fiction and the novel of ideas, the construction of perfect - or nightmarish - worlds rouses the reader's socio-political awareness of the present and invites questions on the shape of the near furure. The Handmaid's Tale deconstructs the utopian narrative by breaking the chronological order of the female protagonist's experience into a time-shifting testimony, a quest for meaning and an exploration of self versus the other. The intricate play on word and symbol can be read against the historical background of seventeenth-century New England Puritanism, as well as the twentieth-century New Right and women's rights movements, while inviting reference to the postmodernist outlook. This volume includes a bibliography, a study of the book's context, as well as essays and commentaries ; the approach has been adapted to the needs of Capes and Agregation students.

Women's Issues in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Women's Issues in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale PDF Author: David Erik Nelson
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
ISBN: 0737758007
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
The Handmaid's Tale depicts a dystopian society in which a religious dictatorship assumes control of the United States, turning the country into the Republic of Gilead. In this new society, women are stripped of autonomy and often relegated to roles such as servant or childbearing maid. Since the book's publication in 1985, it has become a popular point of reference to guard against government interference in women's rights and issues. This informative edition takes a critical look at Atwood's life and writings, with a specific focus on key ideas related to The Handmaid's Tale. The book collects a series of essays pertaining to feminism, sexism, and religious fundamentalism, creating points of discussion for readers that are both modern and relevant. The text also discusses contemporary women's issues and presents perspectives on topics such as surrogacy, same-sex marriage, and modesty.

The Cambridge Introduction to Margaret Atwood

The Cambridge Introduction to Margaret Atwood PDF Author: Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139491423
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Margaret Atwood offers an immensely influential voice in contemporary literature. Her novels have been translated into over 22 languages and are widely studied, taught and enjoyed. Her style is defined by her comic wit and willingness to experiment. Her work has ranged across several genres, from poetry to literary and cultural criticism, novels, short stories and art. This Introduction summarizes Atwood's canon, from her earliest poetry and her first novel, The Edible Woman, through The Handmaid's Tale to The Year of the Flood. Covering the full range of her work, it guides students through multiple readings of her oeuvre. It features chapters on her life and career, her literary, Canadian and feminist contexts, and how her work has been received and debated over the course of her career. With a guide to further reading and a clear, well organised structure, this book presents an engaging overview for students and readers.

The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood

The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood PDF Author: Coral Ann Howells
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108486355
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
A fully revised critical overview of Atwood's career, emphasising her recent dystopias and the televised adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale.

Feminism/postmodernism

Feminism/postmodernism PDF Author: M. Prabhakar
Publisher: New Delhi : Creative Books
ISBN:
Category : Canadian fiction (English) Women authors History and criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description


The Fiction of Margaret Atwood

The Fiction of Margaret Atwood PDF Author: Fiona Tolan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350336750
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Margaret Atwood is one of the most significant writers working today. Her writing spans seven decades, is phenomenally diverse and ambitious, and has amassed an enormous body of literary criticism. In this invaluable guide, Fiona Tolan provides a clear and comprehensive overview of evolving critical approaches to Atwood's work. Addressing all of the author's key texts, the book deftly guides the reader through the most characteristic, influential, and insightful critical readings of the last fifty years. It highlights recurring themes in Atwood's work, such as gender, feminism, power and violence, fairy tale and the gothic, environmental destruction, and dystopian futures. This is an indispensable companion for anyone interested in reading and writing about Margaret Atwood.

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood PDF Author: J. Brooks Bouson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826430627
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
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Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood PDF Author: Fiona Tolan
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9401204543
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction takes a new look at the complex relationship between Margaret Atwood’s fiction and feminist politics. Examining in detail the concerns and choices of an author who has frequently been termed feminist but has famously rejected the label on many occasions, this book traces the influences of feminism in Atwood’s work and simultaneously plots moments of dissent or debate. Fiona Tolan presents a clear and detailed study of the first eleven novels of one of Canada’s most prominent authors. Each chapter can be read as an individual textual analysis, whilst the chronological structure provides a fascinating insight into the shifting concerns of a popular and influential author over a period of nearly thirty-five years.

The SAGE Handbook of Feminist Theory

The SAGE Handbook of Feminist Theory PDF Author: Mary Evans
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1473907349
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description
At no point in recorded history has there been an absence of intense, and heated, discussion about the subject of how to conduct relations between women and men. This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to these omnipresent issues and debates, mapping the present and future of thinking about feminist theory. The chapters gathered here present the state of the art in scholarship in the field, covering: Epistemology and marginality Literary, visual and cultural representations Sexuality Macro and microeconomics of gender Conflict and peace. The most important consensus in this volume is that a central organizing tenet of feminism is its willingness to examine the ways in which gender and relations between women and men have been (and are) organized. The authors bring a shared commitment to the critical appraisal of gender relations, as well as a recognition that to think ‘theoretically’ is not to detach concerns from lived experience but to extend the possibilities of understanding. With this focus on theory and theorizing about the world in which we live, this Handbook asks us, across all disciplines and situations, to abandon our taken-for-granted assumptions about the world and interrogate both the origin and the implications of our ideas about gender relations and feminism. It is an essential reference work for advanced students and academics not only of feminist theory, but of gender and sexuality across the humanities and social sciences.