Canadian Literature Summary

Encyclopedia Britannica analyses the concepts of Canadian Literature thus:

… the cultural history of Canada has been conditioned by the country’s dual origin resulting in a certain tension between French and English components, and by a sensitivity in regard to the position Canada occupies in the company of France, Great Britain, and the United States. The psychological problem is more acute in French, Canada, however, and a strong urge to hold to the past long remained a prominent feature of the French- Canadian outlook, in the second half of the twentieth century however, a burst of vitality has brought a sudden orientation toward the feature. All these considerations are reflected in the thought and literature of French Canada…

Historically

She has received here undergraduate degree from Victoria college and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College. She is a daughter of forest entomolist. As a child, Atwood has spent most of her early childhood days in Canadian wilderness. At the age of sixteen, she finds that writing is “suddenly the only thing I want to do”.

In the literary career, Margaret Atwood has received many honorary degrees and numerous awards including Governor General’s Award, Le Chevalier dans I’Orde des Arts et des Letters in France, the National Club Medal of Honour for Literature in United States, the Giller Prize and International Man Booker Prize. She is the author of more than thirty volumes of poetry, notification and fiction, including Children’s books and short stories. Her famous and recent books include Cats Eye (1989), Alias Grace (1996), Oryx and Crake (2003), Madd Addam (2013), The Heart Goes Last (2005); the short story collection God Bones (1992), and a volume of Poetry, Morning in the Burned House (1995). Atwood’s have been published and read in more than twenty five countries. She has traveled to several countries and has lived in Van Couver, Montreal, Boston, London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Provence and Ireland. Now, Margaret Atwood lives with Graeme Gibson and her daughter in

“Think Globally, Act Locally” is the message conveyed through her writings. Atwood proposes the world for women with peaceful and healthy life and no place for domination and suppression.

Margaret Atwood is a well known critic, fiction writer among the international contemporary writers. The London Review of Books writes her as “the most distinguished novelist currently writing English”. The editor of Canadian Literature, George Woodcock marks her as “No other writer in Canada of Margaret Atwood’s generation has so wide a command of the resources of Literature, so telling a restrained in their use as Margaret Atwood…” (327)

Atwood’s literary career begins as a contemporary novelist with the publication of her first novel, The Edible Woman in 1969. Her second novel is Surfacing (1972), followed by Lady Oracle (1976), Life Before Man (1979), Bodily Harm (1981), Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Cat’s Eye (1988), The Robber Bride (1983) and Alias Grace (1996), Oryx and Crake (2003), The Tent (2006), Madd Addam (2013), Stone Mattress (2014) and The Heart Goes Last (2015) have made her as the most leading women fiction writer in English. Most of her works have been translated into more than twenty languages and published in twenty five countries. Atwood is a unique writer of fiction, poetry and short stories, a versatile social critic, a good