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Literary Precedents for Lady Oracle

This Study Guide consists of approximately 88 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Lady Oracle.
This section contains 307 words
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Lady Oracle Literary Precedents

Lady Oracle both pays tribute to the Gothic novel, about which Atwood once planned to write a Ph.D. dissertation, and satirizes its contemporary manifestation, the cheap costume romance. Joan Foster's current project, Stalked by Love, is interwoven throughout the text of Atwood's narrative, its action paralleling Joan's own vaguely ominous adventures. The mirrored story lines give rise to a comic incongruity that precludes terror, however; Atwood sees the dilemmas of the modern protagonist through an ironic lens, even though Joan shares her literary predecessors' generic sense of personal and spiritual threat, Gothic fiction presents the self as multiple, its complexities a source of its metaphysical horror and its successful integration offering both emotional and aesthetic release. In parodying the form, Atwood exposes the layers of duplicity which produce Joan's identity confusion and trap her in ludicrous situations precluding rescue. Joan's craving for happy endings is satisfied by her writing, which...
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This section contains 307 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Purchase our Lady Oracle Study Guide
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Lady Oracle from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.
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