ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores two of Margaret Atwood's most explicitly political works. It looks at four very different novels that look at how power exhibits itself in different arenas. Margaret Atwood long tried to avoid the label political. The book examines less the evidence of power in Kenneth Boulding's different realms and more how power relations develop from within the small groups that characterize our society. When the word power is used with reference to a literary work, there is a tendency among academic critics to turn quickly to Foucault. Foucault writes frequently on power, examining how society disciplines and punishes those who step outside the socially constructed norm. In Foucault's view, discourse produces an episteme, that being the dominant mode of thinking and reasoning within an era.
