Course Description
T中文：《使女的故事》中的城市、郊區和烏托邦
英文：Urban, Suburban, and Utopian Landscapes in The Handmaid’s TaleThis course focuses on the use of urban space—the city and the suburbs—in The Handmaid’s Tale to see how space works in the novel by signaling the cultural meaning of both as sites of oppression and freedom. First, this study will examine the significance of urban space in the genre of utopian literature. By conducting a close reading of The Handmaid’s Tale, this study then examines the ways in which urban space are perceived, appropriated, and became meaningful place through the perspective of the narrator. It will also examine how the representation of urban space in The Handmaid’s Tale is used to build up the dystopian world and how the protagonist escapes by filling up the space with memories and experience.
First, the study will examine the significance of urban space in modern fiction, especially the genre of utopian literature. Most of the literary works used in discussing theories of space focuses on the discussion of cyberpunk fiction for the image of entropic cityscape, which centers the discussion on how technological development shaped our idea of the urban society and influenced the urban planning of the cities. Utopian literature, however, often presents a completely alternative landscape as that which emerges after the total destruction of current social order. It is also deeply relevant to our imagining of the future and our critical evaluation of the present and the past. Therefore, it is essential for this study to look at both the city and the suburban landscapes in The Handmaid’s Tale, for the two not only present a case of contrast and comparison for the story but also connects urban space with the post-War history of the U.S and Canada. The study will then focus on urban space in The Handmaid’s Tale. It will examine representation of space in the novel, through the eyes of the protagonist, to see how the empire of the Gilead Republic denounces urban culture through the appropriation and the construction of suburban communities and how urban space survives through the apocalyptic destruction of wars to become the site of possibility and escape.