Readings on literary Theories
EPIC database
General resources on literary theories and schools of criticism Purdue OWL (this site covers all the main theories and schools) -In the menu (on the LH side of the page) go to
https://libguides.dickinson.edu/criticism |
Marxist Theory
Schmoop on Marxist Theory Purdue - Marxist Criticism (1930s to present) https://infogr.am/The-Marxist-perspective-of-literary-analysis http://pediaa.com/how-to-apply-marxist-theory-to-literature/
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Critical Texts on The Handmaid's Tale
The first step is to check out EPIC and the database "Literature Resource Centre". There are a number of critical essays on The Handmaid's Tale which are useful and free to access.
- From Cliff Notes - a range of critical analyses of the text
- Gender significance and feminism in The Handmaid's Tale
ACADEMIC TEXTS & JOURNAL ARTICLES
- "Offred’s Complicity and the Dystopian Tradition in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale" by Allan Weiss, York University (2009)
- "Trust Me": Reading the Romance Plot in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale by Madonne Miner (1991)
- "Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: A Contextual Dystopia" by David Ketterer (1989)
- Women disunited : Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale as a critique of feminism (2008)
- “The Politics of The Handmaid’s Tale” by Gorman Beauchamp
- "Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – A Feminist Postmodernist Dystopia – An Overview" by Asra Sultana Mouda
- "Connecting theory and fiction: Margaret Atwood's novels and second wave feminism" by Fiona Tolan (especially pages 145-172)
- "The Aunts as an Analysis of Feminine Power in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale" by Tara J. Johnson
- "Subject-position as victim-position in The Handmaid's Tale" - Jamie Dopp
- "Teaching Them to Read": A Fishing Expedition in the Handmaid's Tale"
- "Selves, Survival, and Resistance in The Handmaid's Tale"
- Feminism, and politics in The Handmaid's Tale: Jill Swale examines the social and historical context of Atwood's novel.
- "The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood: examining its utopian, dystopian, feminist and postmodernist traditions" - Angela Michelle Gulick (Masters Thesis)
- Margaret Atwood's Modest Proposal: The Handmaid's Tale - Karen F. Stein, University of Rhode Island (1996).
- Religion, gender inequality and surrogate motherhood: A new family arrangement in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale - Barbara Miceli (2018)
- Identity, Complicity and Resistance in The Handmaid's Tale - P Stillman and S Johnson (1994)
- "The Handmaid's Tale": "Historical Notes" and Documentary Subversion - Dominick Grace (1998)
- "Basic Victim Positions" and the Women in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale" - Michael Foley (1990)
- OPPRESSION, SEXUALITY AND IDENTITY: A STUDY OF MARGARET ATWOOD’S HANDMAID’S TALE - Dr. Anuradha Nongmaithem (2018)
ARTICLES - EPIC DATABASE (Literature Resource Centre)
- (Fl)orality, gender, and the environmental ethos of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale - Deborah Hooker (2006)
- "The Calculus of Love and Nightmare: The Handmaid's Tale and the Dystopian Tradition"
- "Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale as a multidimensional critique of rebellion"
- Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and the Dystopian Tradition - Amin Malak (1987)
- 'Just a Backlash': Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid's Tale - Shirley Neuman (2006)
- "We lived in the blank white spaces": rewriting the paradigm of denial in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale - Danita J. Dodson (1997)
- A discussion of The Handmaid's Tale - Wendy Perkins
- White-washing oppression in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale - Ben Merriman (2009)
ARTICLES & REVIEWS
- The Handmaid’s Tale: A Warning About Patriarchy and Power - Gloria Steinem on how Margaret Atwood's classic shows the significance of reproductive freedom (May 12th 2017).
- Margaret Atwood, the Prophet of Dystopia. Her fiction has imagined societies riddled with misogyny, oppression and environmental havoc. These visions now feel all too real. (April 2017)
- Margaret Atwood on What ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Means in the Age of Trump (March 2017)
- "We Live in the Reproductive Dystopia of The Handmaid's Tale" - Moira Weigel (April 2017)
- "Haunted by The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
- "Rereading Atwood after the Taliban" by Mary Adams (letter to the editor)
- "Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again" - Junot Diaz (an interview with Margaret Atwood)
- "The other side of Black Mirror: literary utopias offer the seeds of better real life" - Sandra Newman (2019)
- "The Handmaid's Tale, Feminism and the Dangers of Religion" - David Kyle Johnson (2018)
- "Trump's America Is Not The Handmaid's Tale: Margaret Atwood’s world isn’t coming true. Pretending that it is only obscures who Trump’s real victims are." - The Atlantic (2019)
- Book Review by Mary McCarthy (1986)
- Book review "No Balm in Gilead for Margaret Atwood" By MERVYN ROTHSTEIN (1986)
- “Science Fiction in the Feminine: The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Coral Ann Howells (1986)
- Blog post: "The Handmaid’s Tale and feminism: Examining characterisation in Atwood’s novel" (2013)
- "Why The Handmaid's Tale is so relevant today." Jennifer Armstrong (2018)
- "Handmaids Rising" - Atwood, Margaret. (2017)
- "Margaret Atwood on How She Came to Write The Handmaid's Tale" - Atwood, Margaret. (2018)
- "I asked Margaret Atwood About Religion and This is What She Said." - Anna Czarnik-Neimeyer (2017)
- ‘A Man’s World: Gender, Power and Identity in The Handmaid’s Tale’ - Okupe Mofiyinfoluwa Ademidun (2019)
- Oppression, Storytelling, and Resistance in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale - Olivia Hershman (2018). This essay focuses on the TV series but may have some ideas that are relevant to your hypothesis.
CRITICAL OVERVIEWS - EPIC DATABASE (Literature Resource Centre)
- Critical Overview of The Handmaid's Tale - Novels for Students, Gale, 1998. (go to EPIC and the literature resource centre to find this article)
- Overview of The Handmaid's Tale - Wendy Perkins
- The Handmaid's Tale: Overview - Madonne Miner (2020)
ECOCRITICAL LENS
- Bodies and sexuality in Gilead - A queer, eco-feminist reading - Asmae Ourkiya (2020) - based on the TV show but a lot is relevant to the novel.
- Ecofeminism and THT - this is not a critical text but is worth a read if you would like to use the ecocritical lens for THT
Texts on Dystopian Fiction
These are NOT critical texts but may help if you are trying to define dystopian fiction or want to focus on genre in your hypothesis. If you use information from these websites/ links you still need to find TWO critical texts as well.
Critical texts on much ado about nothing
- There are a number of critical texts in the EPIC database - Literature Resource Centre.
- Deception and dramatic irony in Much Ado About Nothing
- Comedy, tragedy and gender politics in Much Ado About Nothing
- With So Good a Wife: Love and Violence in Shakespeare Plays of Suspected Infidelity (honours thesis)
- The darkness at the heart of Much Ado About Nothing (The Guardian review)
- Much Ado About Nothing: Joss Whedon's choices in his interpretation (this is about the film version of the film released in 2012)
- What the critics have said about Much Ado (not a critical text but a good starting point for hypothesis)
CRITICAL TEXTS ON Power of words - poetry
- "The Uprising" - Newman, J. (2015) Ecopoetry and the Imaginative Impulse. Retrieved 9/2/2021 from http://hdl.handle.net/10179/7434
- To help critically respond to "I am the Va": Patterns and Motifs in the va: A Samoan concept of a space between (Masters thesis, 2007)
- To help critically respond to "What is Afakasi?": The female voice in Pasifika poetry: An exploration of “hybrid” identities in the Pacific diaspora
- There is a chapter in this Masters thesis on Grace Taylor: ‘The Bitter Sweetness of the Space Between’: Creative Reflections of Pasifika Ethnic Mixedness
- Grace Taylor - TED Talk: The power of words. She talks about her background and also performs "What is Afakasi?"
CRITICAL TEXTS ON I, Tonya
- CHAPTER ELEVEN - CONTRARIANS AT THE GATE: BIOFICTION, THE ANTI-BIOPIC, AND I, TONYA (2017) VIRGINIA NEWHALL RADEMACHER (look this up through Google Scholar and download the pdf)
Critical texts on Schindler's list
- There are a number of critical texts in the EPIC database - Literature Resource Centre.
- Romancing the Holocaust, or Hollywood and Horror: Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List
- On SCHINDLER’S LIST And The Power Of Desaturating Tragedy