Given Margaret Atwood’s literary acclaim as well as her status as a literary celebrity, her writings have garnered much attention among readers, critics and scholars – including her MaddAddam trilogy (2003-2013). A sizable amount of scholarship has emerged about her issue-rich and aesthetically sophisticated trilogy, addressing such formal questions as the representation of an increasingly diversified narration that shifts from human to posthuman storytelling; human and animal focalization; or the grotesque; but also such present-day concerns as humanity’s rampant intervention in and destruction of human and more-than-human lives and nature; the use and abuse of various fields of knowledge (science, technology, culture, and religion); or the human struggle for survival when civilizatory and democratic structures have collapsed. The considerable scholarly attention notwithstanding, this course encourages students to discuss and come up with fresh readings that carefully consider the series’ formal, stylistic, and aesthetic strategies (narration; focalization; genre conventions and transgressions; character constellations; central metaphors and imagery; humor/satire) as well as the trilogy’s main discourses and issues (ecological crisis; trans- and posthumanism; the neoliberal corporatization of society, politics, and science; digitization and data abuse; storytelling; human-animal studies; myth – and more).

Please purchase and read all volumes of Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (there are no preferred editions):
• Oryx and Crake (2003)
• The Year of the Flood (2009)
• MaddAddam (2013).

Course requirements: Regular attendance and active participation (see syllabus on Stud.IP).