Brave New Objects: Subverting Subjectivity in Margaret Atwood’s Hagseed, The Tempest Retold

Authors

  • Caroline Sarré & Kerry-Jane Wallart Université d’Orléans

Abstract

This paper concerns itself with the multiplication of objects in Hagseed – The Tempest retold, Objects journey from Shakespeare's play into the 2016 novel and act both as attributes, and as co-extensions of bodies, forming original entities when modifying the corporeality of characters. As the original Shakespeare play materializes as an object (the book the reader is holding but also the video performance in the diegesis), a reflexion on the control of bodies, and their (dis)location is carried out. A multiplicity of repetitions, substitutions, imitations, keep opening new doors in the novel but go beyond postmodern allusions to a world where originality has collapsed. Such repetitions are analyzed in this paper through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s work on the reproductivity of modern art, of Linda Hutcheon’s analysis of postmodern literature, and of Foucault's analysis of epistemic shifts at the end of the Renaissance. We consider whether objects and/or things function as evolutionary mechanisms through their metamorphosis and extend this by examining whether the result of this adaptability resonates with the resilience of literature as a whole. In contrast to the idea that reality is unfathomable, certain objects provide us with a new vision of strangeness, of otherness and possibly monstrosity, thereby offering us alternate realities.

Author Biography

Caroline Sarré & Kerry-Jane Wallart, Université d’Orléans

Caroline Sarré is a second year PhD candidate at the University of Orléans under the supervision of Pr. Kerry-Jane Wallart attached to the research unit REMELICE (EA 4709). Her research project in the field of postcolonial and commonwealth literature focuses on a comparative study of survival and resilience in the works of Margaret Atwood within the context of Biopower. She is additionally part of the research axe articulated towards cultural studies, inclusion, citizenship, power and identity. She holds a full time PRCE teaching position at the University for the English Department in the Humanities Faculty where she has been working for the last 20 years. She has been involved in a number of different administrative projects related to course development for both the English and Applied Languages Departments. She has also worked with faculty members in a group initiative to implement improvements in the teaching of English to LANSAD students at both Masters level and throughout the three years for obtaining a Degree level. She has held different posts of responsibility including the coordination of the Master MEEF anglais (2013-2016 and 2018 to 2023) and LANSAD (2007-2018).

Kerry-Jane Wallart is Professor of American and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Orléans. Her research interests focus more specifically on Caribbean literature, including in its diasporic dimensions (Canada, United States, Great Britain). She has co-edited a volume on Jamaica Kincaid (Wagadu, 2019) and two volumes on Jean Rhys (Bloomsbury, 2020 and Routledge, 2023). She has written extensively on Caribbean, West African and African American authors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but she has also published book chapters and articles beyond the Black Atlantic about such postcolonial authors as Alice Munro, Salman Rushdie, Athol Fugard, Breyten Breytenbach or Nadine Gordimer. Her approaches include generic hybridity, gender studies, new materialism and transmediality. She is the editor of Postcolonial Literatures and Arts.

Downloads

Published

2024-10-13

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 2 (2024): Devenirs de l'objet

Section

ARTICLES

License

 

  • Work submitted for publication must be original, previously unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. If previously published figures, tables, or parts of text are to be included, the copyright-holder's permission must have been obtained prior to submission.

 

 

  • Authors of accepted manuscripts will assign to L'Atelier the right to electronically distribute their article, or publish it in any form (Internet, CD ROM, printed copy) but authors will retain copyright and, after the article has appeared in L'Atelier, authors may republish their text (in print and/or electronic form) as long as they clearly acknowledge L'Atelier as the original publisher.