Narrative strategy of life story in the literature of Margaret Atwood

Abstract

The subject of the research in this article is the narrative strategy of life description in the work of Margaret Atwood. Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) is a well–known modern Canadian writer, poet, and literary critic. The work of M. Atwood is considered in three main directions: the search for Canadian identity in the works of M. Atwood; the women's question and theories of feminism in the works of M. Atwood and speculative (conceptual) fiction in the works of M. Atwood. It is these three areas that the largest number of scientific papers about the Canadian writer are devoted to. Based on the life and creative path of M. Atwood, these three highways are justified. But behind them, the basis of the writer's work is lost – the narrative structure, to the study of which M. Atwood devoted many of her literary works. Based on the best practices of foreign and domestic narrative researchers, as well as on the research of M. Atwood herself, in this article we describe how a multi-level narrative of biography unfolds in the writer's fiction, implying a division into narrative layers. Each narrative layer is responsible for a certain time: the past, the present and the timelessness. The relevance and novelty of this article lies in an attempt to describe the narratives of M. Atwood, in isolation from the three main paths, and highlight the features of the narrative of the biography, which is key to the author's works. Thanks to the strategy of biography, the Canadian writer explores the nature of human memory, thinking, and fantasy. By placing the main character, the narrator, at the center of the narrative, M. Atwood allows her characters to independently analyze their own actions, their past, which brings her characters closer to real people. The characters of the writer, like real people, have general ideas about how a story should be built, a story and use literary techniques in talking about themselves. But, gradually opening up, the characters are the narrators of M. Atwood turns to a frank conversation, discarding literary decorations. The approach to the work of M. Atwood from the point of view of narrative, narratology helps to open new facets in the work of the famous author, to emphasize and actualize many artistic features of M. Atwood's books. Atwood, who remain in the shadows with a cultural and ideological approach.