[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-148172-en":3,"doc-seo-148172-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},148172,962085571259,"Putri","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0",2,"Literature","The Criterion: Margaret Atwood: Twenty-Five years of Gothic Tales - Issue 1 - April 2011","Essay examines how Margaret Atwood’s novels sustain prolonged negotiations with the dead through themes of life writing, ghostly voices, and the uncovering of repressed secrets. It traces postmodern transformations of Gothic conventions across four key works, highlighting the paradigmatic female Gothic plot as disclosure and reparation. The discussion situates contemporary Gothic (neo-Gothic) in relation to female subjectivity, irony, transgression, uncanniness, and the haunted domestic home. It also links these patterns to Canadian myth, femininity, and feminism.","[http://www.the-criterion.com](http://www.the-criterion.com) The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165  \nMargaret Atwood: Twenty-Five years of Gothic Tales  \nDr. Behzad Pourgharib  \nAssistant Professor of English English Department  \nGolestan University, Golestan, Iran  \nNothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I’ve found: but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore  \nthem. (The Blind Assassin 508) .  \nIt may seem paradoxical that with all Margaret Atwood’s sex experiments with different narrative genres and her emphasis on women’s fictive autobiographies (‘life writing’) that her novels have always contained prolonged negotiations with the dead. For her female protagonists, the personal quests have been haunted by ghostly voices and by efforts to unearth secrets repressed in their private lives or hidden in the collective social memory, while the novelist herself has returned again and again to traditional generic forms like Gothic romances, women’s popular romances, dystopias, historical novels (to name but a few), renovating old genres but always acknowledging those traditional frames of reference. Not ignoring the dead while writing about the living – indeed, looking into the past in order to understand the present – has been oneof the most significant characteristics of Atwood’s novel writing career. Those imperatives would seem to be at the basis of the creative process for Atwood and for her heroines, and in this essay I shall focus on the ways that Atwood has resurrected and refashioned Gothic conventions over the past twenty-five years in four novels: Lady Oracle (1976) The Robber Bride (1993), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin (2000) . Looking into the changes over this period, we may observe Atwood’s shape-shifting capacities as she reworks the favorite techniques and motifs of Gothic haunting to construct postmodern contemporary texts which engage with shiftsin cultural mythology, especially in relation to questions of femininity and feminism, but also in relation to shifts in Canada’s myths of nationhood and identity.  \nTo describe the paradigmatic female Gothic plot as ‘a narrative of disclosure and reparation’ where ‘the weight of the past…may be escaped only when its secrets are brought to light through the process of discovering connections between past and present’(Williams 171) serves to highlight important elements of history and the uncanny which characterize the genre. To define contemporary Gothic (often called neo-Gothic) by its emphasis on female subjective experience, characterized by ‘excess’ and by women’s desire for ‘escape’ points to the central thematic of Gothic fiction and to its transgressive narrative structures (Becker 21-39) . Both these definitions however are in danger of neglecting the dimension of ironic humor which distinguishes Atwood’s Gothic tales and ferocious delight with which her duplicitous storytellers conduct their negotiations, not only with the dead but also with the living. (These include the characters within the text and also the readers who are outside the action but very much within  \nVol. II. Issue. I 1 April 2011  \n[http://www.the-criterion.com](http://www.the-criterion.com) The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165  \nthe text, for Atwood never forgets that ‘the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist’(Atwood, 1982: 334- 57) . Joan Foster in Lady Oracle, Zenia in The Robber Bride, Grace Marks in Alias Grace, Iris Chase Griffen in The Blind Assassin, and Atwood herself are all identified as sibyls, witches, liars, supreme plotters; by the end (with the exception of Joan) they have disappeared – into death or into the text – and only their voices remain.  \nGothic fiction is obsessed with secrets, with what is buried or hidden or unspeakable. It would be only half true to say it is obsessed with death; rather, i","cbCaithn1JTzzY1X","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaithn1JTzzY1X","pdf",437497,1,13,"English","en",105,"# The Criterion - Margaret Atwood: Twenty-Five years of Gothic Tales\n## Atwood and negotiations with the dead\n## Paradigmatic female Gothic plot: disclosure and reparation\n## Definitions and tensions in contemporary Gothic\n## Secrets, uncanniness, and the haunted home\n## Transgression across realism, fantasy, and nightmare","[{\"question\":\"How does the essay describe Atwood’s relationship to the dead while writing about the living?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that Atwood does not ignore the dead; she looks to the past to understand the present, using negotiations with haunting voices and repressed secrets as part of her creative and narrative process.\"},{\"question\":\"Which four Atwood novels does the essay focus on to trace Gothic conventions over time?\",\"answer\":\"The essay centers on Lady Oracle, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, and The Blind Assassin, highlighting how Atwood reshapes Gothic motifs across roughly twenty-five years.\"},{\"question\":\"What role does irony and humor play in Atwood’s Gothic tales according to the essay?\",\"answer\":\"The essay notes that Atwood’s Gothic narratives are distinguished by ironic humor and the sharp, often ferocious delight with which her duplicitous storytellers conduct negotiations with both the dead and the living.\"}]","The Criterion: Margaret Atwood: Twenty-Five years of Gothic Tales - Issue 1 - April 2011 | PDF",1787776436,20,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":24,"language":23,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":86,"head_meta":88,"extra_data":90,"updated_unix":28},"the-criterion-margaret-atwood-twenty-five-years-of-gothic-tales-issue-1-april-2011","",{"@graph":36,"@context":85},[37,53,68],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,47,50],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":48,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":49},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":52},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-criterion-margaret-atwood-twenty-five-years-of-gothic-tales-issue-1-april-2011/148172/",4,{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":54,"author":55,"headline":13,"publisher":57,"fileFormat":60,"inLanguage":23,"description":14,"dateModified":61,"datePublished":62,"encodingFormat":60,"isAccessibleForFree":63,"interactionStatistic":64},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":56},"Person",{"url":41,"name":58,"@type":59},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-04","2026-08-26",true,{"@type":65,"interactionType":66,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":67},"ViewAction",{"@type":69,"mainEntity":70},"FAQPage",[71,77,81],{"name":72,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":74},"How does the essay describe Atwood’s relationship to the dead while writing about the living?","Question",{"text":75,"@type":76},"It argues that Atwood does not ignore the dead; she looks to the past to understand the present, using negotiations with haunting voices and repressed secrets as part of her creative and narrative process.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"Which four Atwood novels does the essay focus on to trace Gothic conventions over time?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"The essay centers on Lady Oracle, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, and The Blind Assassin, highlighting how Atwood reshapes Gothic motifs across roughly twenty-five years.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"What role does irony and humor play in Atwood’s Gothic tales according to the essay?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"The essay notes that Atwood’s Gothic narratives are distinguished by ironic humor and the sharp, often ferocious delight with which her duplicitous storytellers conduct negotiations with both the dead and the living.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":51,"og:type":87,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":58,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":89,"canonical":51},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":24},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":92},[93,97,100,104,109,114,119,124,128,131,135],{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":94,"show_sort_weight":95,"slug":96},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":98,"slug":99},80,"literature",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":101,"show_sort_weight":102,"slug":103},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":105,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":106,"show_sort_weight":107,"slug":108},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":110,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":120,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":121,"show_sort_weight":122,"slug":123},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":125,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":126,"show_sort_weight":29,"slug":127},9,"Religion & Spirituality","religion-spirituality",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":129,"show_sort_weight":29,"slug":130},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":132,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":133,"show_sort_weight":132,"slug":134},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":136,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":137,"show_sort_weight":105,"slug":138},19,"General","general"]