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  • Chapter 7 - Margaret Atwood’s Revisions of Classic Texts

  • Edited by Coral Ann Howells, Institute of English Studies, University of London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood
    Published online:
    19 March 2021
    Print publication:
    01 April 2021, pp 109-123

  • Summary

    This extended analysis of The Penelopiad, an alternative “herstory” to Homer’s Odyssey, and Hag-Seed, a radical rewriting of The Tempest staged in a Canadian men’s prison, deals with Atwood’s revisionary practices as she redeploys classic texts for her own purposes. Referencing Linda Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation, this discussion foregrounds these texts as Atwood’s most sustained adaptation projects, exploring how such revisions involve authorial decisions around purpose, fidelity, commentary, appropriation, and autonomy. Discussion of The Penelopiad centers on Atwood’s reflections on the nature of myth in its contemporary interpretations and on her feminist politics of narrative representation, while Hag-Seed offers a different revisionary perspective with its emphasis on the figure of the author-artist-magician, personified in the theatre director, Prospero’s double. Crossing genre boundaries between highbrow and lowbrow, Atwood exploits the appeal of popular genres while retaining the resonance of literary fiction.