Lire Margaret Atwood

Overview & Synopsis

This bilingual collection devoted to Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, one of the best-known figures in the field of English language literature, contains the address that she pronounced in Rennes in November 1998 on her novel The Handmaid's Tale – one of the greatest literary successes of the 80s in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain – as well as on the genre to which it belongs. Whether it be a utopia, dystopia, satire, or else speculative fiction, the text with its terrifying scenario belongs to the postmodernist movement. This volume brings together studies of the novel that were presented in December 1998 at the Margaret Atwood Conférence organised by the Centre d'études canadiennes of Rennes. The authors analyse the work from différent perspectives – they explore the relationship between literature and society, politics and poetics, communication and community, and they study the stratégies of resistance and displacement set up by the writer.