‘Set me free': spaces and the politics of creativity in Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed (2016)

Abstract

This paper explores the politics of space, freedom and creativity through the prism of novelistic discourse in Margaret Atwood’s novel Hag-Seed (2016), which is a twenty-first-century adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest (1610–1611). Hag-Seed, set in a Canadian prison, narrates the revenge orchestrated by the protagonist Felix on his antagonists Tony and Sal. Felix, an instructor in a prison-reform programme called the Fletcher’s Correctional Program where he teaches Shakespeare to the inmates, asks them to predict the future of the characters in The Tempest. The prisoners demonstrate agentivity as they bring their individual perspectives to bear on their interpretations.