Event, Narrative and Subjectivity: Idea of History in The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments. (English)

The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments are two companion stories of Margaret Atwood's dystopian fiction series about the rise of political right-wing in the United States after the 1970s. The time span between the two novels is 35 years, which form a bipolar narrative on the same historical event of totalitarianism. The former constructs a relative historical authenticity through a single narrative of subject, while the latter supplements the historical significance produced by the former based on the totalitarian event with plural narratives of the subjects. By deconstructing the overall narrative hierarchy, Atwood not only solves the cliché issues of fiction and reality, but also separates the authenticity of historical events, the narrative subjectivity of historical events, and the plurality of narrative subjects. Ultimately, she responds to the current historical absolutism by calling for a more profound examination of the relationship between man and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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