Margaret Atwood: The Open Eye

by John Moss (Editor), Tobi Kozakewich (Editor)

Overview

Margaret Atwood enjoys a unique prominence in Canadian letters. With over thirty books to her credit, in genres ranging from children's writing to dystopic novels, she is as creatively diverse as she is internationally acclaimed. Her success, however, has been double-edged: the very popularity that makes her such a prominent figure in the literary world also renders her vulnerable to claims of being a "sell-out," as she relates in her Empson lectures. The Open Eye negotiates the space between these positions, acknowledging Atwood's remarkable achievement while considering how it impacts on national politics and identity.

The range of perspectives in this volume is stimulating and enlightening. The Open Eye begins with a focus on Atwood as she presents herself and is presented in Canada and abroad, and then proceeds to consider, more broadly, the intersection of life and literature that Atwood's works and persona effect. It offers fresh insight into Atwood's early writing, redresses the critical void regarding her poetry and shorter prose pieces, and provides a critical base from which readers can assess Atwood's most recent novels.

A common thread throughout these essays is the recognition of Atwood's importance in the literary realm in general, and in Canadian literature more particularly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780776606132
Publisher:	University of Ottawa Press
Publication date:	10/28/2006
Series:	Reappraisals: Canadian Writers Series
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Moss is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. His publications include Being Fiction , Invisible Among the Ruins , and Paradox of Meaning.

Tobi Kozakewich is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Ottawa. Her publications include articles on textual editing and the culture of sensibility. She is presently writing her thesis, which is a literary historical analysis of representations of adultery in twentieth-century English-Canadian prose fiction. Her work on Margaret Atwood is part of this larger project.

Table of Contents

Contributors     xi
Abbreviated Titles     xix
Haunting Ourselves in Her Words   John Moss     1
Open Eyes: An Introduction   Tobi Kozakewich     9
Subject/Object
Margaret Atwood: Branding an Icon Abroad   Laura Moss     19
"A Slightly Uneasy Eminence": The Celebrity of Margaret Atwood   Lorraine York     35
Eyes Wide Shut: Atwood, Bill C-32, and the Rights of the Author   Renee Hulan     49
"Les talents de la voisine": Margaret Atwood and Quebec   Eva-Marie Kroller     65
P.K. Page and Margaret Atwood: Continuity in Canadian Writing   Sandra Djwa     81
Negotiations with the Living Archive   Robert McGill     95
Writing History, from The Journals of Susanna Moodie to The Blind Assassin   Coral Ann Howells     107
Atwood and the "Autobiographical Pact"-for Reingard Nischik   Sherrill Grace     121
Earlier Novels
"Saying Boo to Colonialism": Surfacing, Tom Thomson, and the National Ghost   Cynthia Sugars     137
A Silhouette of Madness: Reading Atwood's Surfacing   Tina Trigg     159
"It looked at me with its mashed eye": Animal and Human Suffering in Surfacing   Janice Fiamengo     171
Having It Both Ways? Romance, Realism, and Irony in Lady Oracle's Adulterous Affairs   Tobi Kozakewich     185
How Can a Feminist Read The Handmaid's Tale? A Study of Offred's Narrative   Tae Yamamoto     195
"Lurid Yet Muted": Narrative and the Sabotage of Dissident Voice in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace   Julie Godin     207
A Contemporary Psychologist Looks at Atwood's Construction of Personality in Alias Grace   Regina M. Edmonds     217
Atwood and Class: Lady Oracle, Cat's Eye, and Alias Grace   Frank Davey     231
Short Fiction and Poetry
Funny Bones Are Good Bones: Atwood and Humour   Wanda Campbell     243
"Back from the Dead": Journeys to the Underworld in Wilderness Tips   Pamela S. Bromberg     257
"It's still you": Aging and Identity in Atwood's Poetry   Sara Jamieson     269
"Com[ing] Through Darkness": Margaret Atwood's "I"-Opening Lyricism   David R. Jarraway     279
Power Politics/Power Politics: Atwood and Foucault   Pilar Somacarrera     291
The Two-Headed Opus   Christine Evain     305
Incandescence: "the power of what is not there" in Margaret Atwood's Morning in the Burned House   Rose Lucas     319
Eye-Openers: Photography in Margaret Atwood's Poetry    Reingard M. Nischik   Julia Breitbach     331
The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake
Negotiating with the Looking Glass: Atwood, Her Protagonists, and the Journey to the Dead   Phyllis Sternberg Perrakis     349
The Body of/as Evidence: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, and the Feminist Literary Mystery   Wendy Roy     361
The Dead Are in the Hands of the Living: Memory Haunting Storytelling in Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin   Helena Hyttinen     373
Margaret Atwood and the Critical Limits of Embodiment   Sally Chivers     385
Frankenstein's Gaze and Atwood's Sexual Politics in Oryx and Crake   Sharon R. Wilson     397
The Representation of the Absent Mother in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake   Nathalie Foy     407
Resistance in Futility: The Cyborg Identities of Oryx and Crake   Michele Lacombe     421
Oryx and Crake: Atwood's Ironic Inversion of Frankenstein   Hilde Staels     433
Atwood's Global Ethic: The Open Eye, The Blinded Eye   Diana Brydon     447
Postscript
Propositions from a (Reap)praising Margaret Atwood Conference   Frank Davey     461
Index     465