1 Authors Hogsette, David S. Title Margaret Atwood's rhetorical epilogue in The handmaid's tale: the reader's role in empowering Offred's speech act. Source Critique (Atlanta, Ga.). v. 38, Summer 1997, p. 262-78.

Abstract The writer explores how Margaret Atwood complicates the political effectiveness of narrative acts by ending The Handmaid's Tale with an epilogue that demands a rereading of the novel. By analyzing the ramifications of this epilogue, she shows how Atwood is primarily concerned with the political nature of language in the novel. She argues that Atwood not only explores the political potential of the language user but also suggests that the receivers of language--listeners or readers--must properly interpret the language the political agent uses for language truly to create a self-empowering subjectivity and reality. She contends that Atwood uses the epilogue to suggest that not only must women reinscribe their voices into the political and historical discourse of their own society, but those women's audiences must learn how to read those reinscribed voices and properly interpret their subjective meanings.

2

Authors Cooper, Pamela. Title Sexual surveillance and medical authority in two versions of The handmaid's tale. Source Journal of Popular Culture. v. 28, Spring 1995, p. 49-66.

Abstract Part of a special section on medicine and culture. The writer discusses Margaret Atwood's science-fiction nightmare The Handmaid's Tale. She examines some of the meanings attached to looking in the novel, referring in particular to what Michel Foucault in The Birth of the Clinic refers to as the "clinical eye"--the gaze of the doctor or the medical profession as an arm of the surveillance mechanism portrayed by Atwood. She investigates some of the problems raised in filming The Handmaid's Tale and contends that the film effectively reformulates these issues of specularization in response to another form of surveillance, the visualizing apparatus of the cinema. She concludes that the film forces the audience to become complicit about what the novel depicts as the oppressive politics of observation.

3

Authors Feuer, Lois. Title The calculus of love and nightmare: The handmaid's tale and the dystopian tradition. Source Critique (Atlanta, Ga.). v. 38, Winter 1997, p. 83-95.

4

Authors Siemerling, Winfried [Reviewer]. Title Postmodern Canadian fiction and the rhetoric of authority [Book Review]. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994. ISBN: 0-7735-1159-8, $39.95. Source Canadian Literature. v. no150, Autumn 1996, p. 191-3. Abstract Deer analyzes the relation between innovative art and authority in the context of six "post-realist" Anglo-Canadian novels, from the Double Hook through Beautiful Losers and The New Ancestors to Badlands, Burning Water, and The Handmaid's Tale. Her primary project, however, is to contrast theories and beliefs with what texts "do" rhetorically in their construction of authority.

5

Authors Stein, Karen. Title Margaret Atwood's modest proposal: The handmaid's tale. Source Canadian Literature. v. no148, Spring 1996, p. 57-73.

Abstract An examination of the prefatory framing matter in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood begins her novel with two dedications and three epigraphs: a passage from Genesis, a passage from Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal," and a Sufi proverb. These preliminary interpolated texts signal the reader that several discourses will be juxtaposed; numerous layers of meaning and language will be superimposed on each other and played against each other to produce ironic effects. Examining these initial framing devices, the writer asks questions about the narrative voice and extends readings of the novel. She argues that the Swift epigraph in particular serves larger thematic and stylistic purposes in the novel.

6 Johnson, Brian. Title Language, power, and responsibility in The handmaid's tale: toward a discourse of literary gossip. Source Canadian Literature. v. no148, Spring 1996, p. 39-55.

Abstract The writer examines the function of gossip in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. His argument suggests that although gossip often functions as a mechanism for preserving social groups, there are also ways in which literary gossip is intimately connected to a process of metafictional self-construction. He discusses the ways in which The Handmaid's Tale not only articulates gossip's potential but also tests the limits of its power and suggests the possible dangers of its method. Locating The Handmaid's Tale in relation to the competing linguistic assumptions of theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Mikhail Bahktin, he shows how such theories provide suggestive models for structuring the workings of gossip and, in turn, how Atwood's treatment of gossip itself might furnish a valuable model for interrogating their assumptions.

7

Authors Klarer, Mario. Title Orality and literacy as gender-supporting structures in Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale. Source Mosaic (Winnipeg, Man.). v. 28, Dec. 1995, p. 129-42.

Abstract Part of a special issue on technologies of literary production. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale demonstrates how orality can be deliberately cultivated to cement political structures and for the purpose of eliminating the destabilizing potential inherent in literature. Atwood illustrates the characteristics and possible misuse of the power of literacy with extreme skill. Her novel abounds with a nostalgia for writing and literature as the instrument of power and a sense of its potential as a mode of expression for both sexes. Although she does show how the orality-literacy dichotomy can be enlisted in a dystopian view of patriarchal power against women, her novel is better read as an exploration of current theoretical debates about the uses of media and about the possible connections between gender and the deep structure of various discursive forms.

8

Authors Rascke, Debrah. Title Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale: false borders and subtle subversions. Source Literature, Interpretation, Theory. v. 6 no3/4, 1995, p. 257-68.

Abstract Part of a special issue on Margaret Atwood. The writer maintains that Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale has as one of its subjects language and how language systems formulate our thinking. She argues that the novel offers us three such systems: the Gilead system, a fixed system dominated by empirical realism, rigid binary oppositions, and implacable boundaries; the narrator's system, which threatens to disrupt Gilead's patriarchal power by a poststructuralist refusal of fixity and truth; and the academic rhetoric of the closing "Historical Notes," which poses as an open, liberated discourse, but in its insidious insistence on univocal representation, is a repetition of Gilead. She contends that the narrator's method of representation works both as a challenge to Gilead and to the academy.

9

Authors Montelaro, Janet J. Title Maternity and the ideology of sexual difference in The handmaid's tale. Source Literature, Interpretation, Theory. v. 6 no3/4, 1995, p. 233-56.

Abstract Part of a special issue on Margaret Atwood. The writer discusses Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale according to the central concepts of Luce Irigaray's theory of sexual difference. She shows how the fictional patriarchy of Gilead institutionalizes sexual indifference by defining women's sexuality only according to "the reproductive-maternal function." She also relates Irigaray's understanding of phallomorphism to the scopophilic practices of Gilead's government. She maintains that what Irigaray terms "the predominance of the visual" functions as the colonizing gaze associated with paternal dominance, seeking to objectify women and rendering them as commodities for exchange among men.

10

Authors Myhal, Bob. Title Boundaries, centers, and circles: the postmodern geometry of The handmaid's tale. Source Literature, Interpretation, Theory. v. 6 no3/4, 1995, p. 213-31.

Abstract Part of a special issue on Margaret Atwood. The writer discusses Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale. He maintains that the most impermeable and intimidating barriers in the novel are those that exist between individuals in the form of strict gender and class segregation. Pointing to the constant centering that takes place on a variety of levels in the novel, he argues that the text as a whole consistently resists this type of centering. The text, he contends, is dissatisfied with the present status quo of Western society and with the dystopian alternative but is unwilling to set forth a centralized principle on which to establish a utopian ideal. He concludes that by refusing to offer any alternative to the dystopian vision, Atwood is refusing to substitute one center for another because to do so would be to enclose oneself in the boundaries of the circle.

11

Authors Staels, Hilde. Title Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale: resistance through narrating. Source English Studies. v. 76, Sep. 1995, p. 455-67.

Abstract The writer examines the recurring discursive form in Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale. She explores the personal voice of the narrator, using Roger Fowler's notion of "mind-style" as "the systems of beliefs, values and categories by reference to which a person comprehends the world." She contends that mind-style analysis throws an interesting light on the complex psychological and ideological stance of Atwood's protagonists. In addition, she notes that the ironic mirroring of discursive form, a typical formal feature of Atwood's novelistic practice, is used to critically evaluate a particular perception of reality. She concludes that by "designing" the text through such a narrative form, Atwood aims at shifting the boundaries of the conventional dystopic genre.

12

Authors Andriano, Joseph. Title The handmaid's tale as Scrabble game. Source Essays on Canadian Writing. v. no48, Winter 1992/1993, p. 89-96.

13

Authors Tomc, Sandra. Title "The missionary position": feminism and nationalism in Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale. Source Canadian Literature. v. no138/139, Fall/Winter 1993, p. 73-87.

14

Authors Givner, Jessie. Title Names, faces and signatures in Margaret Atwood's Cat's eye and The handmaid's tale. Source Canadian Literature. v. no133, Summer 1992, p. 56-75.

15

Authors Stein, Karen F. Title Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale: Scheherazade in dystopia. Source University of Toronto Quarterly. v. 61, Winter 1991/1992, p. 269-79.

16

Authors Banerjee, Chinmoy. Title Alice in Disneyland: criticism as commodity in The handmaid's tale. Source Essays on Canadian Writing. v. no41, Summer 1990, p. 74-92.

17

Authors Templin, Charlotte. Title Atwood's The handmaid's tale. Source Explicator. v. 49, Summer 1991, p. 255-6.

18

Authors Miner, Madonne. Title "Trust me": reading the romance plot in Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale. Source Twentieth Century Literature. v. 37, Summer 1991, p. 148-68.

19

Authors Ferns, Chris. Title The value/s of dystopia: The handmaid's tale and the anti-utopian tradition. Source Dalhousie Review. v. 69, Fall 1989, p. 373-82.

20

Authors Calleri, Michael. Title Another example of how great novels make bad films. Source Humanist. v. 50, May/June 1990, p. 26-8.

22

Authors Doerr, Edd. Title A chilling look at a fundamentalist dystopia. Source Humanist. v. 50, May/June 1990, p. 25.

Title The handmaid's tale: two critical views. E. Doerr; M. Calleri. Source Humanist. v. 50, May/June 1990, p. 25-8.

24

Authors Aufderheide, Patricia [Reviewer]. Title The handmaid's tale [Movie Review]. Source Christianity & Crisis. v. 50, May 14 1990, p. 158-60.

25

Authors Murphy, Patrick D. Title Reducing the dystopian distance: pseudo-documentary framing in near-future fiction. Source Science-Fiction Studies. v. 17, Mar. 1990, p. 25-40.

26

Authors Ketterer, David. Title Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale: a contextual dystopia. Source Science-Fiction Studies. v. 16, July 1989, p. 209-17.

27

Authors Walker, Nancy A. Title Ironic autobiography: from The waterfall to The handmaid's tale. Source Women's Studies. v. 15 no1-3, 1988, p. 203-20.

28

Authors Malak, Amin. Title Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale and the dystopian tradition. Source Canadian Literature. v. no112, Spring 1987, p. 9-16.