| Description |
1 online resource (vi, 223 pages) |
| Contents |
Introduction: Fetishism or Fictional Critique? -- Olympia's Revenge: The Woman-Doll Dyad in The Magic Toyshop -- The Muse Exhumed: The Brief History of a Trope -- Re-Ambiguating the Muse in The Infernal Desire -- Machines of Doctor Hoffman -- The "Poe-etics" of Decomposition: "The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe" and the Reading Effect -- Musing on Baudelaire: "Black Venus" and the Poet as Dead -- Beloved Whose Fantasy is the Femme? -- Dialectical Dames: Thesis and Antithesis in The Sadeian Woman -- There Never was a Woman Like Leilah: The Passion of New Eve -- Conclusion |
| Summary |
British writer Angela Carter described herself as a feminist, yet her fiction scandalized many feminists. With their frequent depictions of sexual violence and women as fetishized objects on display, Carter's novels and short stories referenced many misogynistic male-authored texts from the literary canon, particularly from the tradition of European Decadence. Through a series of juxtaposed readings of Carter's fictions alongside the canonical texts to which she alludes, and a discussion of the critical debates surrounding these texts, Angela Carter and Decadence offers a re-examination of Carter's writing practice. Individual chapters examine her intertextual allusions to Hoffmann, Proust, Poe, Baudelaire and Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, with sections on the representation of Woman as doll, Muse and femme fatale. Through its scrutiny of Carter's claim that her fiction is a form of literary criticism, this study contributes forcefully to contemporary scholarly debates about feminism, aesthetics and postmodernist writing practices |
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"By reading key Carter texts alongside their Decadent intertexts, Tonkin interrogates the claim that Carter was in thrall to a fetishistic aesthetic antithetical to her feminism. Through historical contextualization of the woman-as-doll, muse and femme fatale, Tonkin tests Carter's own description of her fiction as a form of literary criticism."--Publisher's website |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-217) and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Carter, Angela, 1940-1992 -- Criticism and interpretation
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| SUBJECT |
Carter, Angela, 1940-1992 fast |
| Subject |
Decadence in literature.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
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Decadence in literature
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Society.
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780230393493 |
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0230393497 |
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