Spaţiul literar şi tradiţia discursului distopic. Margaret Atwood, „Oryx şi Crake“
Literary Space and the Tradition of Dystopic Discourse
This essay discusses some aspects connected to the profound relationship established between contemporary novel and various forms of spatial representations especially as far as Margaret Atwood’s book Oryx and Crake is concerned. Some sort of cunning experiment becomes more and more obvious within the recent creations of Atwood, whose books (especially the above-mentioned novel) is, at some level of interpretation, an excellent
dystopia implying both the images of chaotic urban culture and its own literary tradition, whereas it also fully embodies an exquisite interpretation of the metaphoric significance of a different kind of „brave new world”, placed under the sign of literary atmosphere. The same may be more or less true as far as some other contemporary novels are concerned, but Atwood excellently uses the significance of an entire literary tradition, proving the
validity of a widely quoted essay of Philip Roth, who expressed contemporary novelists’ sense of being intimidatedby the extravagance of a reality that outdistances their wildest fantasies.
Keywords: contemporary novel, dystopic discourse, literary tradition, aesthetic experiment, imaginary worlds
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