Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Angela Carter: Living in Gothic Times

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Contemporary Women's Gothic Fiction

Part of the book series: Palgrave Gothic ((PAGO))

  • 1489 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter revitalises perspectives on Angela Carter exploring how the Gothic is malleable in her hands. Carter demythologises constraining myths of gender and power, using the Gothic’s ability to hold polarities in tension and expose performativity while celebrating potential and excess. The baroque, embellished language and imagery of Angela Carter’s early rewritten fairytales challenge the gendered status quo, the ‘fictions of my femininity’, while her high Gothic, carnivalesque and often very dark, horror influenced Nights at the Circus (1987). Angela Carter’s writing questions versions of the real and fantastic, reconstructs versions of women in cultural expression, and develops celebratory ways for agency.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 19.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 29.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

  • Armitt, A. (2001) ‘The Fragile Frames of the Bloody Chamber’, in The Fiction of Angela Carter: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism, S. Gamble (ed.) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Austen, J. (1813) Pride and Prejudice (London: T. Egerton).

    Google Scholar 

  • Botting, F. (2002) ‘Aftergothic: Consumption Machines and Black Holes’, in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, J. E. Hogle (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bristow, J. and Broughton, T. (1997) The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter (London: Longman).

    Google Scholar 

  • Brontë, E. (1847) Wuthering Heights (London: Thomas Cautley Newby).

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge).

    Google Scholar 

  • Carter, A. (1968) Several Perceptions (London: Heinemann).

    Google Scholar 

  • Carter, A. (1983) ‘Notes from the Front Line’, in On Gender and Writing, M. Wandor (ed.) (London: Pandora).

    Google Scholar 

  • Carter, A. (1995 [1974]) Afterword to Fireworks, Nine Profane Pieces in Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (London: Chatto and Windus).

    Google Scholar 

  • Cixous, H. [1975] (1976a) ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, in The Signs Reader: Women, Gender, and Scholarship, E. Abel and E. K. Abel (eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Dickens, C. (1860) Great Expectations (London: Chapman and Hall).

    Google Scholar 

  • Donald, J. (1989) ‘The Fantastic, the Sublime and the Popular: Or, What’s at Stake in Vampire Films?’, in Fantasy and the Cinema, J. Donald (ed.) (London: British Film Institute).

    Google Scholar 

  • Du Maurier, G. (1895) Trilby (London: Osgood and McIlvaine & Co.).

    Google Scholar 

  • Frayling, C. (2006) ‘Introduction’, in The Gothic Reader: A Critical Anthology, M. Myrone and C. Frayling (eds.) (London: Tate Publishing).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamble, S. (1994) Angela Carter: Writing from the Front Line (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamble, S. (ed.) (2001b) The Fiction of Angela Carter: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kristeva, J. (1982) The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, L. Roudiez (trans.) (New York: Columbia University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kristeva, J. (1988)Strangers to Ourselves (New York: Columbia University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, G. M. (1796) The Monk (London: J. Saunders).

    Google Scholar 

  • Meaney, G. (2000) ‘History and Women’s Time: Heroes and Villains’, in Angela Carter: Contemporary Critical Essays, A. Easton (ed.) (Basingstoke: Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Munford, R. (2006) Revisiting Angela Carter: Texts, Contexts, Intertexts (London: AIAA).

    Google Scholar 

  • Peach, L. (1998) Angela Carter (Basingstoke: Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Radcliffe, A. (1794) The Mysteries of Udolpho(London: G. G. and J. Robinson).

    Google Scholar 

  • Riviere, J. (1929) ‘Womanliness as a Masquerade’, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sage, L. (1977) ‘The Savage Sideshow: A Profile of Angela Carter’, New Review Vol. 39/40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sage, L. (1992) Women in the House of Fiction: Post-War Women Novelists (London: Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Simpson, H. (2006) Review of The Bloody Chamber, The Guardian, 24 June.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stoker, B. [1897] (1979) Dracula (London: Penguin Books).

    Google Scholar 

  • Vandermeer, J. (2001) ‘Angela Carter’, The Scriptorium, http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/carter.html

  • Walpole, H. (1764) The Castle of Otranto (London: William Bathoe and Thomas Lownds).

    Google Scholar 

  • Wisker, G. (2003b) Angela Carter, A Beginner’s Guide (London: Hodder & Stoughton).

    Google Scholar 

  • Wisker, G. (2006a) ‘Behind Locked Doors: Angela Carter, Horror and the Influence of Edgar Allan Poe’, in Revisiting Angela Carter: Texts, Contexts, Intertext, R. Munford (ed.) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Learning & Teaching, University of Brighton, East Sussex, UK

    Gina Wisker

Authors
  1. Gina Wisker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2016 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Wisker, G. (2016). Angela Carter: Living in Gothic Times. In: Contemporary Women's Gothic Fiction. Palgrave Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-30349-3_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation