| As a "queen" of Canadian literature, Margaret Atwood also enjoys high international prestige for her remarkable contribution to English literature in novels, poetry, short stories and literary review. A prolific writer, Margaret Atwood is author of over 35 books translated into more than 30 languages; recipient of many literary awards, such as the Booker, Canada's Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Literary Prize. In academic quarters, Atwood is one of the most frequently studied writers at the university level. Academic critics have published some forty books and many articles about her works, covering a wide range of critical perspectives, whether artistic or ideological.The thesis aims at the exploration of five of her novels, The Edible Woman (1969), Surfacing (1972), The Handmaid's Tales (1985), Cat's Eye (1988), as well as Oryx and Crake (2003). Most critics regard The Edible Woman as a feminist social satire criticizing North American consumer society in the 1960s from a feminist's point of view. Surfacing is mainly considered as a combination of feminism, nationalism and ecologism. The Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye are usually analyzed from the perspective of feminism and power relationship. Oryx and Crake shocks the critical circles as a dystopian fiction predicting the ecological disasters caused by human abuses of science and technology. Representing Atwood's writing characteristics during the different stages of her writing career, these novels attract the worldwide attention of both academic quarters and reading public. Though they reflect a variety of themes, these novels share a common one: ecologism. This theme is one of the most important concerns in Atwood's works from early in her writing career up till now. Besides, few people have adopted the perspective of the relationship between humans and nature to conduct a systematic ecological study on Atwood's representative works of different stages. Therefore, the thesis attempts to...
|
PDF Full Text Request