The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood (Cambridge Companions to Literature) by Coral Ann Howells


The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
Title : The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0521548519
ISBN-10 : 9780521548519
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 224
Publication : First published March 30, 2006

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.

The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood (Cambridge Companions to Literature) Reviews

  • Elnaz

    This is a very comprehensive companion on both the biography and the works of Margaret Atwood.
    In case you are interested in her masterpieces do not hesitate to take that.

  • Kristina Coop-a-Loop

    New insight into Atwood's books. I enjoyed much of it, but found the chapter about humor to be rather dry, filled with jargon, and (ironically) humorless. Good reading if you love Atwood's books.

  • Jenny

    A nice compilation of essays on Atwood's work. I paid the most attention to the sections on her novels (because that is most relevant to my paper), but the other sections were also interesting. I liked the last section of the book the best, but that may be due to personal preference and relative level of familiarity with the works under discussion. A good resource.

  • Wendy O'connell

    The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood by Coral Ann Howells was recommended to me by a friend and colleague who teaches Atwood poems to advanced students. I plan to teach The Handmaid's Tale this year and wanted more insight into it. I also want to use more of Atwood's poetry that is not easily accessible with a quick online search. Often students will look up the meaning of a poem or novel and this squashes their initial critical thinking. Generally, I like to read a novel first with only my third eye.

    I enjoyed the essay, Blindness and survival in Margaret Atwood's major novels, by Sharon R. Wilson. Wilson illustrated an insightful approach to novels like Oryx and Crake and Cat's Eye. I will have to read Oryx and Crake now, but I still did not connect with Cat's Eye. I really didn't like the narrator, Elaine, despite the interesting survival journey Atwood presented. I just don't like an emotionless character, even when the writer picked a palette of greys that lead to a marble in a red pocketbook, an insufficient ending. Offred in Handmaid's Tale also seemed void of emotion, but the situation made her character work for me rather than Elaine's. Offred had a reason to become indifferent. Her choices were eliminated. Elaine seemed to have too much choice.

    Novels aside, I also enjoyed Branko Gorjup's Margaret Atwood's poetry and poetics. I adore Atwood's poem, Quattrocento. The line, "The kingdom of god is within you/because you ate it." Gorjup says, "Eve is metamorphosed into a true protean self as the whole of a diverse creation disappears into her and she is a free agent now, alive with possibility."
    Eve as a free agent is fantastical.

    I ended up with a four star rating for this, because some of it I did not understand as well as I would have liked on a first read, but I've only read three Atwood novels and a few poems. I will have to change that.