Atwood’s Body Politic: a Taxonomy of Gender Representation

Authors

  • Michelle Gadpaille

Keywords:

Margaret Atwood, gender, female body in fiction

Abstract

This article applies Butler’s concepts of gender as construction and performance to a selection of fiction by margaret Atwood. By using binary categories inspired by the theory of Eagleton and cixous, the author proposes a taxonomy of narrative techniques employed by Atwood to embed the female body into cultural and political discourse.

References

Atwood, M. 1984. Bluebeard’s Egg. Toronto: McClelland-Bantam.

Atwood, M. 1990. Cat’s Eye. London: Virago.

Atwood, M. 1978. The Edible Woman. Toronto: McClelland-Bantam.

Atwood, m. 1985. The Handmaid’s Tale. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

Atwood, M. 1998. Lady Oracle. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

Atwood, m. 1980. Life Before Man. Toronto: McClelland Bantam seal.

Atwood, m. 2006. Moral Disorder. London: Bloomsbury.

Atwood, m. 1994. Surfacing. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, Ncl.

Atwood, m. 2006. The Tent. London: Bloomsbury.

Bordocixous, H. 2001. The laugh of the medusa. in V. B. Leitch (ed.). The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York, London: Norton, 2039-2059.

Coward, R. 1997. The True Story of How I Became My Own Person. In C. Belsey and J. Moore (eds.) The Feminist Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 26-35.

Eagleton, T. 1983. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Gadpaille, M. 1993. Odalisques in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. Metaphor andSymbolic Activity 8, 221-226.

Garber, M. 1997. Cross-dressing, Gender and representation: Elvis Presley. in c.

Belsey and J. Moore (eds.) The Feminist Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 64-181.

Moi, T. 1997. Feminist, female, feminine. In C. Belsey and J. Moore (eds.) The Feminist Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 104-116.

Roy, W. 2006. The Body of/as Evidence: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, and the feminist literary mystery. In J. Moss and T. Kozakewich (eds.) Margaret Atwood: The Open Eye. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, 361-371.

Showalter, E. 1990. Rethinking the Seventies: Women Writers and Violence. In P. C. Hoy II, E. H. Schor and R. Diyanni (eds.) Women’s Voices: Visions and Perspectives. New York: McGraw-Hill, 572-82.

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Published

25-06-2021

How to Cite

Gadpaille, M. (2021). Atwood’s Body Politic: a Taxonomy of Gender Representation . Philologia, 6(1), 7–15. Retrieved from https://philologia.org.rs/index.php/ph/article/view/249

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 1 (2008)

Section

Emeritus

License

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