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Genetic Engineering As Literary Praxis: A Study In Contemporary Literature, Taylor Evans
Genetic Engineering As Literary Praxis: A Study In Contemporary Literature, Taylor Evans
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis considers the understudied issue of genetic engineering as it has been deployed in the literature of the late 20th century. With reference to the concept of the enlightened gender hybridity of Cyborg theory and an eye to ecocritical implications, I read four texts: Joan Slonczewski's 1986 science fiction novel A Door Into Ocean, Octavia Butler's science fiction trilogy Lilith's Brood – originally released between 1987 and 1989 as Xenogenesis – Simon Mawer's 1997 literary novel Mendel's Dwarf, and the first two books in Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction MaddAddam series: 2003's Oryx and Crake and 2009's The Year Of …
The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson
The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores Atwood's depiction of gender in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. In an interview from 1972, Margaret Atwood spoke on survival: "People see two alternatives. You can be part of the machine or you can be something that gets run over by it. And I think there has to be a third thing." I assert that Atwood depicts this "third thing" through her characters who navigate between the binaries of "masculine" and "feminine" in a third realm of gender. As the female characters—regardless of their passive or aggressive behavior—engage in a quest for agency, …