Focusing on questions of intertextuality, authorship and representation, this book offers a re-examination of one of the twentieth century's most important British writers. A provocative collection both offers new readings of Carter's opus, and contributes to contemporary critical debates concerning gender, postmodernism and intertextual theory.

Covering her early poetry and journalism as well as her fictional writings, leading international scholars explore new directions in scholarship on Angela Carter.

This book unearths Carter’s deconstruction of the male-dominated discipline of Western thought. Revealing the extensive philosophical research that underpins Carter’s intertextual work, this book offers new readings of her fiction in relation to a range of philosophical texts and ideas. By re-examining Carter’s writing with reference to the archived collection of her notes that has recently become available at the British Library, Angela Carter and Western Philosophy puts forward new interpretations of Carter’s writing practices. With chapters examining her allusions to Plato, Hobbes and Rousseau, Descartes, Locke and Hume, Wittgenstein and Ryle, as well as Kant and Sade, this book illuminates Carter’s engagement with different areas of Western thought, and discusses how this shapes her portrayal of reality, identity, civilisation, and morality. Angela Carter and Western Philosophy will be of interest to researchers, lecturers, and students working on contemporary women’s writing, philosophy and literature, and intertextual literary practices.

In 1972, Angela Carter translated Xavière Gauthier’s ground-breaking feminist critique of the surrealist movement, Surréalisme et sexualité (1971). Although the translation was never published, the project at once confirmed and consolidated Carter’s previous interest in surrealism, representation, gender and desire and aided her formulation of a new surrealist-feminist aesthetic. Carter’s sustained engagement with surrealist aesthetics and politics as well as surrealist scholarship aptly demonstrates what is at stake for feminism at the intersection of avant-garde aesthetics and the representation of women and female desire. Drawing on previously unexplored archival material, such as typescripts, journals, and letters, Anna Watz’s study is the first to trace the full extent to which Carter’s writing was influenced by the surrealist movement and its critical heritage. Watz’s book is an important contribution to scholarship on Angela Carter as well as to contemporary feminist debates on surrealism, and will appeal to scholars across the fields of contemporary British fiction, feminism, and literary and visual surrealism.

Widely acknowledged as one of the most important English writers of the last century, Angela Carter's work stands out for its bawdiness and linguistic zest, its hospitality to the fantastical and the absurd, and its extraordinary inventiveness and range. Her life was as vigorously modern and unconventional as anything in her fiction. This is the story of how Angela Carter invented herself - as a new kind of woman and a new kind of writer - and how she came to write such seductive and distinctive masterworks as The Bloody Chamber, Nights at the Circus, and Wise Children. Because its subject so powerfully embodied the spirit of the times, the book also provides a fresh perspective on Britain's social and cultural history in the second half of the twentieth century. It examines such topics as the 1960s counterculture, the social and imaginative conditions of the nuclear age, and the advent of second wave feminism. Author Edmund Gordon has followed in Angela Carter's footsteps - travelling to the places she lived in Britain, Japan, and the USA - to uncover a life rich in adventure and incident. With unrestricted access to her manuscripts, letters, and journals, and informed by interviews with Carter's friends and family, Gordon offers an unrivalled portrait of one of the twentieth century's most dazzlingly original writers. This sharply written narrative will be the definitive biography for years to come.

This volume offers a novel approach to the world of adaptations through an intense cross-cultural study. The concept of ‘adaptation’ is extensively discussed here, exploring its meaning and relevance, as well as the various forms it takes. The book investigates what happens when three 20th century European plays, considered as landmark works of the age, are adapted to the Indian context in three different languages; discussing the dynamics and the results of this. It takes us into the minds of the creators – playwrights, adapters, directors, actors, and producers, and ‘others’. The interviews with directors who suffused the western plays with Indian flavor and served them to the local audience also provide valuable insights about theatrical, cultural, and ideological concerns. It also represents an interesting collection of examples and analogies hand-picked from the wide space of literature, theatre, and cinema. It offers a comprehensive base for a thorough understanding of adaptations and the allied multi-disciplinary issues.

The arrangement of the material, indicated by the chapter headings, draws attention to a variety of areas not normally associated with dominant perceptions of Angela Carter. These encompass food, fashion, art, poetry, music, performance and translation, which will be discussed in a number of historical, literary and cultural contexts.