ABSTRACT
When describing a landscape, ocularcentric approaches tend to dominate human’s understanding of their surroundings while disregarding alternative ways of conceiving the world through other senses which have often been more associated with the “animal-side” given their apparent subjectivity. To challenge this anthropocentric perspective, this chapter undertakes a close reading seven of Atwood’s novels—Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle (1976), Life Before Man (1979), Cat’s Eye (1988), The Robber Bride (1993), Alias Grace (1996) and The Blind Assassin (2000)—to analyse how the landscape is reflected, particularly to comprehend if these passages go beyond a traditional visual representation. Thus, the chapter studies how Atwood transports the reader to the Canadian landscape through the presence of nonhuman animals and how they shape human’s understanding of space and time. To do so, it applies the theories of Canadian composer and environmentalist Murray R. Schafer in his book The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (1977) and Ben De Bruyn’s reenvisioning of the concept of “soundscape” in The Novel and the Multispecies Soundscape (2020) to survey how literature can become a medium through which landscapes can be aesthetically experienced through the different senses of humans. To better illustrate the interactions between human and nonhuman animals in shaping the landscape and how they are perceived by Atwood in her works, the analysis distinguishes between mammals, birds and arthropods.
