This thesis explores the role and representation of the natural world in a selection of Canadian dystopian novels: After the Fact (1986) by Hélène Holden, Voices in Time (1986) by Hugh MacLennan, Oryx and Crake (2004) and The Handmaid's Taie (1985) by Margaret Atwood. In order to argue that Canadian dystopian fiction varies from conventional literary dystopias because of its predominant use of nature, this thesis first examines the influence that archetypal images and symbols of nature have on specific dystopian conventions in Holden's and MacLennan's respective novels. Then, this study looks at how Atwood's critique of nature as a victim in Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid's Taie engages with ecocritic and ecofeminist ideas causing a breakdown in the generic conventions of Atwood's dystopian novels. / Cette thèse explore le rôle et la représentation de la nature dans les romans dystopiques canadiens suivants: After the Fact (1986) d'Hélène Holden, Voices in Time (1986) de Hugh MacLennan, Oryx andCrake (2004) et The Handmaid's Taie (1985) de Margaret Atwood. Ayant pour objectif de démontrer que la fiction canadienne dystopique se distingue de la littérature dystopique traditionnelle en fonction de son utilisation dominante de la nature, cette thèse examine l'influence des images, des symboles et des archétypes de la nature sur les conventions dystopiques spécifiques à After the Fact de Holden et Voices in Time de MacLennan. Ensuite, cette étude analyse la représentation de la nature comme victime dans Oryx and Crake et dans The Handmaid's Taie de Atwood qui diffère des conventions traditionnelles du roman dystopique en s'inspirant des idées découlant de l'écoféminisme et de l'écocritique.

The screen, as recent studies in a number of fields indicate, is a cultural object due for critical reappraisal. Work on the theoretical status of screen objects tends to focus upon the materialisation of surface; in other words, it attempts to rethink the relationship between the supposedly 'superficial' facade and the 'functional' object itself. I suggest that this work, while usefully chipping away at the dichotomy between the 'superficial' and the 'functional', can lead us to a more radical conclusion when read in the context of subjectivity. By rethinking the relationship between the surface and the obverse face of the screen as the terms of a dialectic, we can ‘read’ the screen as the vital component in a process which constitutes the Subject. In order to demonstrate this, I analyse productions of subjectivity in literary texts of the twenty-first century — in doing so, I assume the novel as nonpareil arena of the dramatisation of subjectivity — and I propose a reading of the work of Jacques Lacan as hitherto unacknowledged theorist par excellence of the form and function of the screen. Lacan describes, with the function of desire and the formation of the screen of fantasy, the primary position this ‘screen-form' inhabits in the constitution of the Subject. Lacan’s work forms a critical juncture through which we must proceed if we are to properly read and understand the chosen texts: The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber; The Tain by China Miéville; Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood; and Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. In each text, I analyse the particular materialisations of the screen and interrogate the constitution of the subject and the locus of desire. By analysing the vicissitudes of subjectivity in these texts, I make a claim for the study of the screen as constituting a central question in the field of contemporary literature.