Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed: Dramatic Encounters between Classic and Adaptation, Life and Art, Freedom and Imprisonment

Abstract

This paper examines Margaret Atwood’s novel Hag-Seed (2016) as a metatextual adaptation of Shakespeare’s literary classic The Tempest. The terms “adaptation” and “classic” are employed to explain the relation of Atwood’s work to its source material. The performance of The Tempest prepared by the characters of the novel that engages convicts is a form of multi-media interactive theater, and the classical text of the Shakespearean play is considered a form of “sacra” (Turner), which has educational and utilitarian purposes. Michel Foucault’s analysis of prison, his concept of “heterotopia”, and Victor Turner’s concept of “liminality” are introduced to discuss the convicts participating in a theatrical workshop as liminal individuals during the ritual of transition while in the heterotopian space of a prison.