Adapting Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale and Beyond

by Shannon Wells-Lassagne (Editor), Fiona McMahon (Editor)

Overview

This book engages with Margaret Atwood’s work and its adaptations. Atwood has long been appreciated for her ardent defence of Canadian authors and her genre-bending fiction, essays, and poetry. However, a lesser-studied aspect of her work is Atwood’s role both as adaptor and as source for adaptation in media as varied as opera, television, film, or comic books. Recent critically acclaimed television adaptations of the novels The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu) and Alias Grace (Amazon) have rightfully focused attention on these works, but Atwood’s fiction has long been a source of inspiration for artists of various media, a seeming corollary to Atwood’s own tendency to explore the possibilities of previously undervalued media (graphic novels), genres (science-fiction), and narratives (testimonial and historical modes). This collection hopes to expand on other studies of Atwood’s work or on their adaptations to focus on the interplay between the two, providing an interdisciplinary approach that highlights the protean nature of the author and of adaptation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030736859
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	12/17/2021
Series:	Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture
Edition description:	1st ed. 2021
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Shannon Wells-Lassagne is author of Television and Serial Adaptation (2017), and the co-editor of Adapting Endings (2019), and Screening Text (2013). Her work has appeared in Screen, The Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, Critical Studies in Television, and The Journal of Popular Film and Television.

Fiona McMahon is Professor of American Literature at the Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier 3, France, and editor of the series Profils américains at the Presses universitaires de de la Méditerranée. She is the author of Charles Reznikoff : une poétique du témoignage (2010), H.D. Trilogy (2013) and co-editor of Penser le genre en poésie contemporaine (2019).

Table of Contents

Part I Atwood Adapts.- “Atwood’s Hag-Seed and The Heart Goes Last, a Generic Romp”.- “Negotiating with the Dead”: Authorial Ghosts and Other Spectralities in Atwood’s Adaptations.- Transforming the Human and the Novel: The Utopian Potential of Resilience in Margaret Atwood’sM addAddam Trilogy.- Atwood’s Protean Poetics: Adaptation in the Service of Survival.- Feminist Adaptations/Adaptations of Feminism: Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad.- Part II Atwood Adapted.- The Unreliable Female (Narrator) in Mary Harron’s Miniseries Alias Grace.- The Figure of the Objectified Servant, from the Silent Biblical Maid to the Twenty-First-Century Web TV Rebel.- Shallow Focus Composition and the Poetics of Blur in The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu, 2017–).- Feminism, Facts, and Fear: The Protean Reception of The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood 1985, Miller 2017–).- You Are Here: The Handmaid’s Tale as Graphic Novel.- Offred at the Opera: Dimensions of Adaptation in Poul Ruders and Paul Bentley’sT he Handmaid’s Tale.- Part III Atwood in the World: Atwood Adaptation Practitioners.- Staging The Penelopiad.- Filming Alias Grace.- Filming The Handmaid’s Tale.- “Adapting (to) Atwood”

Editorial Reviews

The sixteen pieces in this volume, partly illustrated with colored stills and screenshots, photographs, diagrams, or musical scores, build a comprehensive piece of conducted research about the texts of Margaret Atwood … . The fact that a great number of fans, academics, readers, or artists keep returning to the creative output of Margaret Atwood … Atwood’s alchemy leaves no doubt that her magic ‘has to do, in one word, with relevance’ … .” (Sandra Danneil, AAA, Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Vol. 47 (1), June, 2022)

“This volume sheds light on the legacy in which Atwood inserts herself, and on the legacy she leaves for others to reinterpret through their perspectives and sensitivities. Articles as well as interviews offer insight into the subversive aspects of literary fiction, and enhance the political necessity of adapting and updating these narratives in the light of contemporary events.” (Laura Benoit, Interfaces, Vol. 48, 2022)

“Students will love this book, and for readers anywhere it will stimulate a fresh creative engagement with Atwood’s imagined worlds.” (Coral Ann Howells, British Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 34 (2), 2022)

From the Publisher