Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Editions Used
- Abbreviations
- Margaret Atwood Chronology
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Margaret Atwood in Her Canadian Context
- Chapter 2 Margaret Atwood on Questions of Power
- Chapter 3 Home and Nation in Margaret Atwood’s Later Fiction
- Chapter 4 Margaret Atwood’s Female Bodies
- Chapter 5 Margaret Atwood and Environmentalism
- Chapter 6 Margaret Atwood and History
- Chapter 7 Margaret Atwood’s Revisions of Classic Texts
- Chapter 8 Margaret Atwood’s Humor
- Chapter 9 Margaret Atwood’s Poetry and Poetics
- Chapter 10 Margaret Atwood’s Later Short Fiction
- Chapter 11 Margaret Atwood’s Recent Dystopias
- Chapter 12 The Hulu and MGM Television Adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Chapter 3 - Home and Nation in Margaret Atwood’s Later Fiction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2021
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Editions Used
- Abbreviations
- Margaret Atwood Chronology
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Margaret Atwood in Her Canadian Context
- Chapter 2 Margaret Atwood on Questions of Power
- Chapter 3 Home and Nation in Margaret Atwood’s Later Fiction
- Chapter 4 Margaret Atwood’s Female Bodies
- Chapter 5 Margaret Atwood and Environmentalism
- Chapter 6 Margaret Atwood and History
- Chapter 7 Margaret Atwood’s Revisions of Classic Texts
- Chapter 8 Margaret Atwood’s Humor
- Chapter 9 Margaret Atwood’s Poetry and Poetics
- Chapter 10 Margaret Atwood’s Later Short Fiction
- Chapter 11 Margaret Atwood’s Recent Dystopias
- Chapter 12 The Hulu and MGM Television Adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
This chapter, paired with Chapter 2, suggests a close connection between politics at all levels in Atwood’s thinking, contrasting Somacarrera’s discussion of personal power politics with Rao’s analysis of power politics at the national level. It traces the development of themes of home and exile across selected texts: Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. The argument focuses on concepts of home and estrangement, showing how discourses of home are an extension of discourses of nation and national belonging, and how across Atwood’s later novels discourses of home have shifted into discourses of insecurity and alienation. Here storytelling is of paramount importance, providing patterns of meaning and a form of therapy as it becomes a poetics of survival in a postapocalyptic world where any idea of habitation is fragile and home is no longer a place of safety.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood , pp. 47 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021