Title: The Handmaid's Tale vs. The Handmaid's Tale. The graphic novel as a modern reading of the traditional novel
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2021, vol. 47, iss. 1, pp. 181-203
Extent
181-203
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2021-1-10
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/144300
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The Handmaid's Tale, which is Margaret Atwood's best recognizable work to date, has come into the spotlight again in the late 2010s thanks to the publication of two new adaptations, including Renée Nault's graphic novel. As the story has been translated into the visual medium by an artist from the new generation, able to look at many issues presented there from a different perspective, while also influenced by the changed sociopolitical context, it has gained a new meaning and has become recontextualized to fit the changed circumstances. This paper sets out to trace the links between the two novels and to explore a new interpretation of the original, which recalibrates the well-known tale through the lens of the comic medium. A close visual and/or textual analysis and the comparison of the two works proves that telling the story through the images mostly and trusting the readers to supply their own interpretation of the fragmented narrative is a new path that is worth exploring.
References
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[2] Atwood, Margaret and Nault, Renée (2019) The Handmaid's Tale. The Graphic Novel. London: Jonathan Cape.
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[28] Rao, Eleonora (2009), "A Body in Fragments: Life Before Man and The Handmaid's Tale". In: Bouson, J. Brooks (ed.) The Handmaid's Tale: Critical Insights. New York: Salem Press, 246–260.
[29] Somigli, Luca (1998), The Superhero with a Thousand Faces: Visual Narratives on Film and Paper. In: Horton, Andrew, McDougal, Stuart Y. (eds.) Play It Again, Sam. Retakes on Remakes. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 279–294.
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[31] Stein, Daniel (2015) Comics and Graphic Novels. In: Rippl, Gabriele (ed.) Handbook of Intermediality: Literature, Image, Sound, Music. Berlin: De Gruyter, 353–367. DOI: 10.1515/9783110311075 | DOI 10.1515/9783110311075
[32] Tolan, Fiona (2007) Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi.
[33] Van Spanckeren, Kathryn, Castro, Jan Garden (eds.) (1988) Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
[34] Witek, Joseph (1989) Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
[2] Atwood, Margaret and Nault, Renée (2019) The Handmaid's Tale. The Graphic Novel. London: Jonathan Cape.
[3] Baer, Elizabeth R. (1988) Pilgrimage Inward. Quest and Fairytale Motifs in Surfacing. In: Van Spanckeren, Kathryn, Castro, Jan Garden (eds.) Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 24–34.
[4] Baetens Jan and Hugo Frey (2015) The Graphic Novel: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[5] Baetens, Jan (2012) Words and Images in the Contemporary American Graphic Novel. In: Herzogenrath, Bernd (ed.) Travels in Intermediality: ReBlurring the Boundaries. Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press, 92–110.
[6] Bouson, J. Brooks (1993) Brutal Choreographies: Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of Margaret Atwood. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
[7] Chute, Hillary (2019) The Graphic Novel Versions of Literary Classics Used to Seem Lowbrow. No More. The New York Times. Nov 12, 2019 [online]. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/books/review/the-iliad-a-graphic-novel-adaptation-gareth-hinds.html (Accessed on March 17, 2021)
[8] Drnaso, Nick (2018) Sabrina. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly.
[9] Dvorak, Marta (1998) What is Real/Reel? Margaret Atwood's 'Rearrangements of Shapes on a Flat Surface,' or Narrative as Collage. Etudes Anglaises, 51 (4), 448–460.
[10] Dvorak, Marta (ed.) (1999) Lire Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale. Presses Universitaires de Rennes: Rennes [online: open edition]. Available at: https://books.openedition.org/pur/30504. (Accessed on March 17, 2021).
[11] Eisner, Will (2008 [1985]) Comics and Sequential Art. Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company Ltd..
[12] Gardner, Jared (2012) Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
[13] Goldsmith, Francisca (2005) Graphic Novels Now: Building, Managing, and Marketing a Dynamic Collection. Chicago: American Library Association.
[14] Groensteen, Thierry (2007) The System of Comics (transl. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
[15] Hatfield, Charles (2009 [2005]) Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
[16] Hutcheon Linda (1988) The Canadian Postmodern. A Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction. Toronto, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[17] Hutcheon, Linda (2012) The Glories of Hindsight: What We Know Now. In: Stacey, Robert David (ed.) RE: Reading the Postmodern. Canadian Literature and Criticism After Modernism. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 39–53.
[18] Jenkins, Henry (2006a) Comics and Convergence Part One. In: Confessions of an Aca-Fan blog, Aug 17, 2006, [online]. Available at: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2006/08/comics_and_convergence.html (Accessed on March 17, 2021)
[19] Jenkins, Henry (2006b) Comics and Convergence Part Two. In: Confessions of an Aca-Fan blog, Aug 22, 2006, [online]. Available at: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2006/08/comics_and_convergence_part_th.html (Accessed on March 17, 2021)
[20] Jenkins, Henry (2020a) Comics and Stuff: A Virtual Book Club. In: Confessions of an AcaFan blog, Jun 08, 2020, [online]. Available at: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2020/6/6/comics-and-stuff-a-virtual-book-club (Accessed on March 17, 2021)
[21] Jenkins, Henry (2020b) Comics and Stuff. New York: New York University Press.
[22] Koeverden, Jane van (2019) How Renee Nault Adapted The Handmaid's Tale into a Graphic Novel. CBC Books, May 6. 2019 [online]. Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/books/how-reneenault-adapted-the-handmaid-s-tale-into-a-graphic-novel-1.5094184 (Accessed on March 17, 2021)
[23] Marshall, Alex (2018) Graphic Novel in Running for Man Booker Prize for First Time. The New York Times, July 23, 2018 [online]. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/books/booker-prize-graphic-novel-ondaatje.html (Accessed on March 17, 2021)
[24] McCloud, Scott (1993) Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Perennial.
[25] Morton, Drew (2017) Panel to the Screen: Style, American Film, and Comic Books during the Blockbuster Era. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
[26] Nault, Renée – the official website, https://www.reneenault.com/handmaid-s-tale (Accessed on March 17, 2021)
[27] Pederson, Kaitlin, and Cohn, Neil (2016) The changing pages of comics: Page layouts across eight decades of American superhero comics. Studies in Comics 7 (1), 7–28. DOI: 10.1386/stic.7.1.7_1. | DOI 10.1386/stic.7.1.7_1
[28] Rao, Eleonora (2009), "A Body in Fragments: Life Before Man and The Handmaid's Tale". In: Bouson, J. Brooks (ed.) The Handmaid's Tale: Critical Insights. New York: Salem Press, 246–260.
[29] Somigli, Luca (1998), The Superhero with a Thousand Faces: Visual Narratives on Film and Paper. In: Horton, Andrew, McDougal, Stuart Y. (eds.) Play It Again, Sam. Retakes on Remakes. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 279–294.
[30] Staels, Hilde (1995) Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: Resistance through Narrating. English Studies 76 (5), 455–467. https://doi.org/10.1080/00138389508598988 | DOI 10.1080/00138389508598988
[31] Stein, Daniel (2015) Comics and Graphic Novels. In: Rippl, Gabriele (ed.) Handbook of Intermediality: Literature, Image, Sound, Music. Berlin: De Gruyter, 353–367. DOI: 10.1515/9783110311075 | DOI 10.1515/9783110311075
[32] Tolan, Fiona (2007) Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi.
[33] Van Spanckeren, Kathryn, Castro, Jan Garden (eds.) (1988) Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
[34] Witek, Joseph (1989) Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.