Five Ways of Looking at 'The Penelopiad'

As the lights go down in the great church of St James, Piccadilly, a voice speaks eerily out of the darkness somewhere off to the side: ‘Now that I’m dead I know everything.’ And then a single spotlight reveals centre stage a small grey-haired female figure robed in black sitting on a throne; she begins to speak. This is Margaret Atwood, doubly imaged here in performance as Penelope, for I am describing a staged reading of part of The Penelopiad by the writer herself. The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus is one of the first three books in a new series, The Myths, published by Canongate Press in the United Kingdom and simultaneously in 32 other countries. The other two books are Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth and Jeanette Winterston’s Weight, a retelling of the myth of Atlas and Heracles. It is Canongate’s intention to publish one hundred of these myth revisions by 2038. Atwood has been rewriting classical myths ever since her first privately published volume of poems Double Persephone back in 1961, and in this context her recent comments on myth are significant: Strong myths never die. Sometimes they die down, but they don’t die out. They double back in the dark, they re-embody themselves, they change costumes, they change key

The presentation of emotion in the English Gothic novels of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with particular reference to Ann Radcliffe's "Mysteries of Udolpho", M. G. Lewis's "Monk", Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", C. R. Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer", Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre", and works by the minor Minerva Press novelists Regina Maria Roche and Mary Anne Radcliffe

This thesis is an examination of values and craftsmanship in the Gothic novel, and sets out to demonstrate that the changes which occurred between 1790 and 1820 constituted a series of experimental attempts to present new areas of emotional and imaginative awareness in fiction. Though it is not a historical survey, some attention has been given to location. The studies of particular novels are related to the aesthetic tastes of the age, and an attempt is made to show how the Gothic novelists1 preoccupation with emotion and fantasy distinguished their work from earlier fiction. The discussion follows chronological lines which reflect the developmental nature of the changes. The characteristic emphasis in Gothic fiction is on irrationality and subjective experience. Though it is invariably melodramatic, there is a gradual movement away from conventionalised abstractions of feeling and character towards more precise analysis and description of individual emotional states. The novels I have chosen mark significant stages in this progress. The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk established the pattern and the enthusiasm for Gothic fiction. In Mrs. Radcliffe's sentimental Gothic and Lewis's "horror" Gothic there is an insistence on sensational incidents and emotional crises which characterises the pre-Romantic ambivalent attitude towards irrational experience. Frankenstein and Melmoth the Wanderer mark the assimilation of Gothic into the imaginative literature of Romanticism. Both are recognisably Gothic in their obsessional fantasies and their sensationalism, but both authors use external dramatics as techniques for realising inner states and motivations rather than as ends in themselves. In conclusion, Jane Byre shows the full realisation of the potential of Gothic, where fact and fantasy are fused into a realistic statement of total experience. It marks the break-through into the everyday world which the earlier Gothic novelists had rejected or failed to achieve. Jane Byre places the value of the earlier Gothic novels in perspective. In addition to expressing late eighteenth century emotional reactions against rationalist conventions, they can be seen as necessary experiments in working out a new emotional and imaginative vocabulary in fiction.<p

Atwood’s Reinventions: So Many Atwoods

In The Malahat Review (1977), Canadian critic Robert Fulford described Margaret Atwood as “endlessly Protean,” predicting “There are many more Atwoods to come.” Now at eighty, over forty years later, Atwood is an international literary celebrity with more than fifty books to her credit and translated into more than forty languages. This essay focuses on the later Atwood and her apparent reinvention since 2000, where we have seen a marked shift away from realistic fiction towards popular fiction genres, especially dystopias and graphic novels. Atwood has also become increasingly engaged with digital technology as creative writer and cultural critic. As this reading of her post-2000 fiction through her extensive back catalogue across five decades will show, these developments represent a new synthesis of her perennial social, ethical and environmental concerns, refigured through new narrative possibilities as she reaches out to an ever-widening readership, astutely recognising “the need for literary culture to keep up with the times.

Towards a Recognition of Being: Tomson Highway's Kiss ofthe Fur Queen and Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach

Este ensayo realiza un análisis de dos novelas recientes de autores nativos canadienses, Tomson Highway, el dramaturgo nativo más conocido en Canadá, y Eden Robinson, una joven escritora de British Columbia. Se analizan las novelas como textos híbridos que operan en la dislocación entre las culturas nativas y la educación y los modelos literarios blancos. Ambos novelistas realizan complejos ejercicios de traducción transcultural, y el análisis se centra en cómo usan los géneros europeos para conseguir sus propios objetivos, para reivindicar una tradición cultural propia y reconstruir la identidad nativa. El ensayo reconoce la calidad y el valor de los términos literarios convencionales blancos (de los que los autores son muy conscientes), a la vez que subraya su potencial como crítica social y aboga por un reconocimiento de las culturas aborígenes en el discurso canadiense cultural y nacional.This essay concerns two recent novels by Canadian Aboriginal writers, Tomson Highway, Canada’s best known Native playwright, and Eden Robinson, a young writer from British Columbia. These novels are discussed as hybridised texts, working across dislocations between Native cultures and white literary education and white fictional models. Both novelists are engaged in complex cross-cultural translation exercises, and the discussion focuses on adapting European genres for Aboriginal writers’ own purposes to reclaim Native cultural inheritances and to reconstruct Native identities. I am arguing for quality in conventional white literary terms (of which both writers are very conscious), while speaking about social inequality, and making a case for equality in the recognition of Aboriginal peoples within contemporary Canadian cultural and national discourse

Book Reviews

Book Review

Levetiracetam versus phenytoin for second-line treatment of paediatric convulsive status epilepticus (EcLiPSE): a multicentre, open-label, randomised trial

Background Phenytoin is the recommended second-line intravenous anticonvulsant for treatment of paediatric convulsive status epilepticus in the UK; however, some evidence suggests that levetiracetam could be an effective and safer alternative. This trial compared the efficacy and safety of phenytoin and levetiracetam for second-line management of paediatric convulsive status epilepticus.Methods This open-label, randomised clinical trial was undertaken at 30 UK emergency departments at secondary and tertiary care centres. Participants aged 6 months to under 18 years, with convulsive status epilepticus requiring second-line treatment, were randomly assigned (1:1) using a computer-generated randomisation schedule to receive levetiracetam (40 mg/kg over 5 min) or phenytoin (20 mg/kg over at least 20 min), stratified by centre. The primary outcome was time from randomisation to cessation of convulsive status epilepticus, analysed in the modified intention-to-treat population (excluding those who did not require second-line treatment after randomisation and those who did not provide consent). This trial is registered with ISRCTN, number ISRCTN22567894.Findings Between July 17, 2015, and April 7, 2018, 1432 patients were assessed for eligibility. After exclusion of ineligible patients, 404 patients were randomly assigned. After exclusion of those who did not require second-line treatment and those who did not consent, 286 randomised participants were treated and had available data: 152 allocated to levetiracetam, and 134 to phenytoin. Convulsive status epilepticus was terminated in 106 (70%) children in the levetiracetam group and in 86 (64%) in the phenytoin group. Median time from randomisation to cessation of convulsive status epilepticus was 35 min (IQR 20 to not assessable) in the levetiracetam group and 45 min (24 to not assessable) in the phenytoin group (hazard ratio 1·20, 95% CI 0·91–1·60; p=0·20). One participant who received levetiracetam followed by phenytoin died as a result of catastrophic cerebral oedema unrelated to either treatment. One participant who received phenytoin had serious adverse reactions related to study treatment (hypotension considered to be immediately life-threatening [a serious adverse reaction] and increased focal seizures and decreased consciousness considered to be medically significant [a suspected unexpected serious adverse reaction]). Interpretation Although levetiracetam was not significantly superior to phenytoin, the results, together with previously reported safety profiles and comparative ease of administration of levetiracetam, suggest it could be an appropriate alternative to phenytoin as the first-choice, second-line anticonvulsant in the treatment of paediatric convulsive status epilepticus