Naydenova R.R. —
Narrative strategy of life story in the literature of Margaret Atwood
// Philology: scientific researches. – 2024. – ¹ 3.
– P. 114 - 121.
DOI: 10.7256/2454-0749.2024.3.70174
URL: https://en.e-notabene.ru/fmag/article_70174.html
Read the article
Abstract: The subject of the research in this article is the narrative strategy of life description in the work of Margaret Atwood. Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) is a well–known modern Canadian writer, poet, and literary critic. The work of M. Atwood is considered in three main directions: the search for Canadian identity in the works of M. Atwood; the women's question and theories of feminism in the works of M. Atwood and speculative (conceptual) fiction in the works of M. Atwood. It is these three areas that the largest number of scientific papers about the Canadian writer are devoted to. Based on the life and creative path of M. Atwood, these three highways are justified. But behind them, the basis of the writer's work is lost – the narrative structure, to the study of which M. Atwood devoted many of her literary works. Based on the best practices of foreign and domestic narrative researchers, as well as on the research of M. Atwood herself, in this article we describe how a multi-level narrative of biography unfolds in the writer's fiction, implying a division into narrative layers. Each narrative layer is responsible for a certain time: the past, the present and the timelessness. The relevance and novelty of this article lies in an attempt to describe the narratives of M. Atwood, in isolation from the three main paths, and highlight the features of the narrative of the biography, which is key to the author's works. Thanks to the strategy of biography, the Canadian writer explores the nature of human memory, thinking, and fantasy. By placing the main character, the narrator, at the center of the narrative, M. Atwood allows her characters to independently analyze their own actions, their past, which brings her characters closer to real people. The characters of the writer, like real people, have general ideas about how a story should be built, a story and use literary techniques in talking about themselves. But, gradually opening up, the characters are the narrators of M. Atwood turns to a frank conversation, discarding literary decorations.
The approach to the work of M. Atwood from the point of view of narrative, narratology helps to open new facets in the work of the famous author, to emphasize and actualize many artistic features of M. Atwood's books. Atwood, who remain in the shadows with a cultural and ideological approach.
Naydenova R.R. —
Mythological heroes, historical figures and characters of world literature in the works of Margaret Atwood
// Philology: scientific researches. – 2024. – ¹ 3.
– P. 89 - 95.
DOI: 10.7256/2454-0749.2024.3.70207
URL: https://en.e-notabene.ru/fmag/article_70207.html
Read the article
Abstract: The subject of the research in this article is Margaret Atwood's literary game, which includes work with myths, world history and literature. Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) is a well-known modern Canadian writer, poet, literary critic and critic. Her works include the novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and its sequel, The Testaments (2019), as well as the fantasy trilogy The Mindless Addam (2003-2013). No matter what M. Atwood writes about, her works are always a story, a complex and multilevel narrative, in the center of which stands the figure of the narrator. Having begun her literary activity in the heyday of postmodernism, M. Atwood combines many features of this trend in her work: literary play, rethinking archetypal images and traditions, deconstruction. Taking as a basis the achievements of foreign and domestic researchers of M. Atwood's work, as well as research in the field of literary studies by M. Atwood herself, we describe how M. Atwood studies, analyzes and recreates well–known patterns on a new basis – in Canadian literature. The main conclusions of the study are: 1) Being a representative of young Canadian literature without a well-formed cultural and literary layer, M. Atwood borrows from the global literary tradition, as well as mythology and folklore, heroes and images that she seeks to "instill" on new Canadian soil. 2) M. Atwood's deconstruction is not the destruction, analysis of an established tradition, but, on the contrary, an attempt to create it through appropriation and assimilation of other people's traditions. 3) M. Atwood, as a rule, takes ancient Greek and European myths and fairy tales as a basis. 4) Working with the characters of wandering plots and textbook works (Shakespeare), M. Atwood often resorts to overturning the established idea of characters, creating doppelgangers and "werewolves".