Coinages pervade Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic novel Oryx and Crake (2003). Most of the neologisms in the novel denote corporations and their products and form part of a thoroughgoing critique of consumerism. The coinages are jarringly hyperbolic and their orthography often evokes contrary connotations. However, in the thematic context of the novel, coining practices follow certain patterns and function as effective, if ambiguous, satirical tools. On one level, the practice of branding is thoroughly satirized. On another, however, the neologisms point to both the limitations and possibilities of satire when dealing with the themes addressed in the novel: commoditization, environmental damage on a planetary scale, and a vision of the imminent end of humanity itself. Internet and online gaming, and the names of bioengineering corporations and the products they develop (cosmetic procedures, foodstuffs, as well as new, spliced species). Neologisms fulfil structural, thematic, and stylistic functions in the novel, and these are exemplified in the discussion. In conclusion, the manner in which these hyperbolic coinages simultaneously highlight the limitations and possibilities of satiric coinage as means of critique is explored. KEYWORDS: Naming in Oryx and CrakeThrough much of the post-apocalyptic narrative of Oryx and Crake, Jimmy/Snowman, the protagonist, believes himself to be the last surviving human: his only companions are the Crakers, humanoid bioengineered beings designed as the ecofriendly replacements of humans.The apocalyptic event of the MaddAddam trilogy is a pandemic engineered to cause the demise of humanity, and to thus pave the way for the Crakers. The apocalypse forms a chasm in the narrative, a break that is underscored both onomastically, and through the tense of narration.The novel comprises two interwoven timelines: the post-apocalyptic present-tense narrative only spans a few days and is alternated with much longer sections consisting of Snowman's flashbacks to his pre-apocalyptic life. To mark the difference between his pre- and post-apocalyptic existence, Jimmy takes the name Snowman after the catastrophe, and refers throughout to his previous self in the third person. He derives "bitter pleasure" from the adoption of this "dubious label" at a time when climate change has rendered snow obsolete in North America (Atwood, 2003a: 7). At first he describes the name as a shortened form of Abominable Snowman, a figure "existing and not existing" (Atwood, 2003a: 7), and therefore an appropriate name for perhaps the last remaining human being. Much later in the novel, Snowman realizes:Maybe he's the other kind of snowman, the grinning dope set up as a joke and pushed down as an entertainment, his pebble smile and carrot nose an invitation to mockery and abuse. Maybe that's the real him, the last Homo sapiens-a white illusion of a man, here today, gone tomorrow, so easily shoved over, left to melt in the sun, getting thinner and thinner until he liquefies and trickles away altogether. As Snowman ...
In his short entry on "Ecocriticism" in the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, Laurie Ricou notes that "Canadian literary studies, with their long-standing interest in nature, wilderness, and landscape, might be said to have always been ecocritical" (324). His assertion is directly addressed in the editors' introduction to this anthology, and to some extent Greening the Maple may be deemed a substantiation of Ricou's claim. Ella Soper and Nicholas Bradley describe the aim of the anthology as providing a "retrospective, curatorial account of the field" (xiv) by tracing "the past and present of Canadian ecocriticism" (xv). In bringing together essays that deal with the environment and literature from specifically Canadian perspectives, including essays that long predate first wave ecocriticism per se, the anthology embeds Canadian ecocriticism in a historical context, thereby convincingly showing Canadian literary and critical concerns with various aspects of the representation of nature to be more than just a widelyspread stereotype. Indeed, the editors demonstrate that Canadian literature and Canadian literary studies have been informed by what could be deemed ecocritical ideas well before the institutionalisation of ecocriticism from the 1990s onward. By framing Canadian ecocriticism as a development from the thematic criticism that dominated literary studies in Canada during the 1960s and 1970s (xxvii), Soper and Bradley detail an ecocritical lineage which diverts from the usual narratives that habitually trace the institutional recognition of ecocriticism as a discipline to publications on the Romantics and Transcendentalists, such as
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