Twentieth Century American Literature: Margaret Atwood

Description

The landmark Chelsea House Library of Literary Criticism, first published in the 1980s, is one of the most impressive collections of literary criticism ever produced. It is now available in digital format for the first time. This volume of the series provides excerpts and full-length critical essays on the Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• América
• Literature
• Contemporary history
• Study
• 20th century
• Author
• American
• Contemporary
• Train de luxe
• Margaret Atwood

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 février 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781685661281
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Twentieth Century American Literature: Margaret Atwood
Copyright © 2022 by Infobase
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ISBN 978-1-68566-128-1
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Contents Chapters Margaret Atwood: Beyond Victimhood (excerpt) Janus through the Looking Glass: Atwood s First Three Novels (excerpt) Atwood s Poetic Politics (excerpt) Recycling Art (excerpt on Margaret Atwood) Dinosaur Dance (excerpt on Margaret Atwood) "Surfacing: Amerindian Themes and Shamanism" (excerpt on Margaret Atwood) Atwood s Haunted Sequences (excerpt) Eight Poets (excerpt on Margaret Atwood) Metamorphosis and Survival: Notes on the Recent Poetry of Margaret Atwood (excerpt) Victimization or Survival (on Margaret Atwood) From "Bashful but Bold: Notes on Margaret Atwood as Critic"
Chapters
Margaret Atwood: Beyond Victimhood (excerpt)
1973

(We) are clearly to find Power Politics not a collection but a book. Why does the shape of the book, especially toward the end, bother me? When she says: In the room we will find nothing In the room we will find each other
why do I not believe? Perhaps the language does not change enough, the terms of the struggle deepen mythologically but do not change in any convincing way from the conventional power struggle. Some fear seems to prevent her breaking through in this book as she breaks through with her protagonist in Surfacing. To put it another way, she doesn't seem able to imagine the next stage, and a book that remains caught in its first terms while seeming to suggest that it will transcend them, is frustrating, but brilliantly so. It is still a strong and good sequence and a far more satisfying book as a book than ninety per cent of the poetry collections I read. Only in reading her work I have come to want more than that. A talent like hers needs to transcend its own categories, to integrate the preconscious and conscious materials, the imagery and ideas. Her wit can lead her into trivia; just as her passion for the omen can lead her to see the portentous in grains of sand and jam jars.…
The source of integration of the self, the reservoir of insight in Atwood lie deep in a wild and holy layer of experience usually inaccessible in modern life—in how her characters make a living, how they act with each other, how they respond or fail to respond to birth, death, loss, passion, how they permit themselves to live out of touch with what they want and what they feel. The landscape of the psyche in Atwood tends to be a cabin in the Canadian woods, on a lake, on a river—the outpost of contact between straight lines (roads, houses, gardens) and natural curves (trees, deer, running water): the imposed order and the wild organic community.…
To cease to be a victim, each of her protagonists fights an entirely solitary battle. Their only allies are the dead, the forces in nature and the psyche, their own life energies. Yet they must live among others. Somehow the next step is missing. I don't believe one woman can single-handedly leave off being a victim: power exists and some have it.