Revisiting the Monster Tale: Frankensteinian Tropes in Margaret Atwood’s Speculative Fiction

Mary Shelley’s iconic Frankenstein is a pivotal work in the Western canon. Since its publication in 1818, the novel has been re-written and adapted many times. Shelley’s magnum opus sublimely evokes the postlapsarian condition of the fallen, while also capturing the imminent fear of technology, scientific progress and artificial procreation. The paper aims to explore the Frankenstein legacy and the development of Frankensteinian motifs in Atwood’s speculative fiction. More precisely, the paper focuses on The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The MaddAddam Trilogy – Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), MaddAddam (2013), and The Heart Goes Last (2015), analyzing how postmodern literature recycles and incorporates elements from Frankenstein to reflect (on) contemporary anxieties and to insist on the fluid discursivity of monstrosity.