CANADIAN ECOCRITICISM AND THE WORKS OF MARGARET ATWOOD: STATE OF THE ART AND CASE STUDY

    Engster, Marie (2016)
Mémoire
Accès restreint
    • CANADIAN ECOCRITICISM AND THE WORKS OF MARGARET ATWOOD:
      STATE OF THE ART AND CASE STUDY
    • 4 juillet 2016
    • Ecocriticism
    • Atwood
    • Canadian literature
    • Margaret Atwood is an important figure in Canadian ecocriticism. Defined as the study of the relationship between literature and the natural environment, ecocriticism is a field of study which has long been monopolized by American critics. It is only from the second half of the twenty-first century that Canadian critics stood up and attempted to provide their country with a voice of itself. Canada’s natural landscape, its most obviously spectacular and significant trait, provided authors and artists with a strong basis for a new national identity. Margaret Atwood was one of the first major authors to express this identity in her work. She viewed Canadian wilderness as hostile and mysterious, bringing humans to a state of constant survival. More than that, she highlighted the unbalanced relationship between humans and nature, oscillating between fascination and rejection of a fearful and primitive landscape, thus creating divided identities, at the national and individual levels. My work focuses on one of Atwood's short story called "Death by Landscape", in which she personifies the canadian divided identities into the characters of Lois and Lucy. Through a complex psychological analysis embedded in numerous narrative layers, Atwood analyzes the canadian relationship to nature, but also enlarges the scope of her message. With her literature, she works towards a reconnection of human beings with their inner natural self, so that they reach harmony with the environment instead of harming it with deeply rooted thoughts and actions.

Citation bibliographique

Engster, Marie (2016), CANADIAN ECOCRITICISM AND THE WORKS OF MARGARET ATWOOD: STATE OF THE ART AND CASE STUDY [Mémoire]