Synopses & Reviews
Margaret Atwood's international celebrity has given a new visibility to Canadian literature in English. This Companion provides a comprehensive critical account of Atwood's writing across the wide range of genres within which she has worked for the past forty years, while paying attention to her Canadian cultural context and the multiple dimensions of her celebrity. The main concern is with Atwood the writer, but there is also Atwood the media star and public performer, cultural critic, environmentalist and human rights spokeswoman, social and political satirist, and mythmaker. This immensely varied profile is addressed in a series of chapters which cover biographical, textual, and contextual issues. The Introduction contains an analysis of dominant trends in Atwood criticism since the 1970s, while the essays by twelve leading international Atwood critics represent the wide range of different perspectives in current Atwood scholarship.
Review
"A masterful account of Atwood's life and career." -- Choice
Review
"It is an enlightening and pleasurable experience to immerse oneself into this new and timely collection on Canada's 'Queen of Letters.'"
-Susanne Becker, The Review of English Studies
Review
"An example of sound, well-informed and well-written scholarship that consolidates the achievements of several decades of Atwood criticism..."
-Pilar Cuder Dominguez, Atlantis: A Journal of the Spanish Organization for Anglo-American Studies
Review
"The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood boasts an impressive array of essays by international Atwood scholars. The sense of Atwood that emerges...is of a writer who enacts Canadianness in an increasingly global world and who is committed to questioning the use and abuse of power on a variety of levels..."
-Laura M. Robinson, Canadian Literature
Review
"Coral Ann Howell's book is exactly what its title suggests: a companion. Neither handmaiden, following far behind the writer and her critics with overly respectful steps, nor master, leading the way and forcing the writer and her works into pigeonholes and places they should not be. Rather, a companion - of sound and agile mind as well as of engaging demeanor, able to keep pace alongside and offer lively conversation and insights along the way."
-Nathalie Cooke, McGill University, University of Toronto Quarterly
Synopsis
A comprehensive critical account of Margaret Atwood's novels, short stories, poetry, and essays.
About the Author
Coral Ann Howells is Professor of English and Canadian Literature at the University of Reading. Her books include Private and Fictional Words, Margaret Atwood (winner of the Margaret Atwood Society Best Book Award in 1997), Alice Munro, and Contemporary Canadian Women's Fiction: Refiguring Identities. She is co-editor of Margaret Atwood: The Shape-Shifter and editor of Where are the Voices Coming From? Canadian Culture and the Legacies of History. She is former President of the British Association of Canadian Studies and has been associate editor of the International Journal of Canadian Studies. She has lectured extensively on Margaret Atwood and Canadian women's fiction in the UK, Europe, Australia, Canada, USA, and India.
Table of Contents
Margaret Atwood chronology; Introduction Coral Ann Howells; 1. Margaret Atwood in her Canadian context David Staines; 2. Biography/Autobiography Lorraine York; 3. Power politics: power and identity Pilar Somacarrera; 4. Margaret Atwood's female bodies Madeleine Davies; 5. Margaret Atwood and environmentalism Shannon Hengen; 6. Margaret Atwood and history Coomi S. Vevaina; 7. Home and nation in Margaret Atwood's later fiction Eleanora Rao; 8. Margaret Atwood's humour Marta Dvorak; 9. Margaret Atwood's poetry and poetics Branko Gorjup; 10. Margaret Atwood's short stories and shorter fictions Reingard M. Nischik; 11. Margaret Atwood's dystopian visions: The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake Coral Ann Howells; 12. Blindness and survival in Margaret Atwood's major novels Sharon R. Wilson; Further reading.