In 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro apologized to Margaret Atwood for winning the
Nobel Prize for Literature. Atwood was tipped to win the said prize that
year. Still, a greater part of Western readers hails her as the one
writer who “effectively, predicted our present”. Atwood is the author of
more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her
writings combine vision and satire with a poignant and descriptive style
that evokes eco-critical and geopolitical symbolism in order to mediate
thematic concerns about the encounters between humans and nature. In
this course, we will study the Canadian writer with regard to her
writing routines, her themes, her style, and the cultural contexts that
made her writings possible. In this reading-intensive course, we will,
therefore, turn to select essays on genre, politics, and the human
imagination authored by Atwood. Also, we will read her poetry, learn
about recurring tropes, themes, and poetic forms. Finally, we will
discuss three of her novels, The Edible Woman, The Blind Assassin, and The Handmaid’s Tale in order to discuss canonization, classification, and authorship.
- Dozent/in: Marcel Hartwig