The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter: Fiction, Femininity, Feminism (Longman Studies In Twentieth Century Literature)

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Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature
General Editor: Stan Smith
Professor of English, University of Dundee

This exciting new series provides students of twentieth-century literature with some of the most advanced scholarly and critical work in the field in a lucid and accessible form. Volumes may focus on an individual author or literary movement or address critical and cultural themes, historical moments and movements. The series assumes no particular critical line or theoretical tendency but aims to present the best writing on twentieth-century literature and culture by new and established critics in a way which reveals the remarkable diversity of modern critical approaches.
Drawing on many aspects of contemporary feminist theory, this lively collection of essays assesses Angela Carter's polemical fictions of desire. Carter, renowned for her irreverent wit, was one of the most gifted, subversive, and stylish British writers to emerge in the 1960s. This study provides a detailed overview of Carter's career, and examines her fascination with female sexuality from her earliest writings to her posthumously published works of the 1990s. It features well-established critics as well as new scholars, and throws fresh light on Carter's unapologetic exploration of erotic fantasy, sexual fetishism, and women's insubordinate desires. The essays illuminate Carter's commitment to a wealth of non-realist literary genres: myth, legend, fairy tale, horror and the Gothic.

The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter will be of interest to undergraduates and postgraduates researching topics in contemporary writing, cultural studies, and women's studies. These essays will also provide a useful reference-point for students wishing to discover more about the most recent approaches to feminist fiction.

Joseph Bristow is a Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Trev Lynn Broughton is Director of the Centre for Women's Studies and Lecturer in Women's Studies at the University of York, UK.