Scholarship and criticism on Angela Carter

Notice

This is not necessarily a "complete" bibliography of scholarship on this author. Rather, it is a selective bibliography of feminist SF scholarship, or scholarship of particular interest to feminist SF scholars.

Monographs and critical anthologies

• Joseph Bristow and Trev Lynn Broughton, editors. The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter: Fiction, Femininity, Feminism, Essex: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997.

• Charlotte Crofts, Anagrams of Desire: Angela Carter's Writing for Radio, Film and Television (2003)
• Aidan Day, Angela Carter: The Rational Glass]] (Manchester University Press: 1988)
• Emilija Dimitrijevic, Intimacy and identity in the postmodern novel (Peter Lang, 2008). ISBN 3039110314. ISBN 9783039110315. "This book focuses on the themes of intimacy and identity in the contemporary novel and, in particular, in the novels of A. S. Byatt, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson. Not only do the specificity of the contemporary social context and a growing awareness of the relational nature of the concepts of intimacy and identity set these novels apart from earlier writing that take these issues more for granted. Their very concern with the themes of intimacy and identity also sets them apart from much postmodernist, or mannerist, writing that chooses to cold-shoulder these arguments. The study draws on work by contemporary social theorists and philosophers, and aims to examine issues which, although central to the writing of these authors, have been neglected or treated superficially in literary criticism. Finally, it looks into the ways in which the new approaches to the question of intimacy and identity relate and contribute to contemporary debates on the postmodern novel."
• Sarah Gamble (b.1962) Angela Carter: Writing from the Front Line (Edinburgh University Press, 1997) ISBN 0748608516.
• Sarah Gamble, "The Fiction of Angela Carter: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001)
• Alison Lee, Angela Carter (Volume 540, Twayne's English Authors Series) (Twayne, 1997). ISBN 0805778233, ISBN 9780805778236.
• Gemma López, Seductions in Narrative: Subjectivity and Desire in the Works of Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson, Cambria Press, 2007, ISBN 1934043850, ISBN 9781934043851.
• Rebecca Munford, Re-Visiting Angela Carter: Texts, Contexts, Intertexts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. ISBN 1403997055. ISBN 9781403997050.. "Focusing on questions of intertextuality, authorship and representation, Re-visiting Angela Carteroffers a re-examination of one of the twentieth century's most important British writers. While the introductory essay theorizes the politics of Carter's writing, the individual chapters re-visit her relationship to key literary and cultural influences (e.g. Shakespeare, de Sade, the Gothic, Japan) and illuminate neglected ones (e.g. Jean-Luc Godard, Marcel Proust, Charles Dickens, surrealism). This provocative and timely collection both offers new readings of Carter's opus, and contributes to contemporary critical debates concerning gender, postmodernism and intertextual theory."

• Linden Peach, Angela Carter (2nd Edition) Palgrave Macmillan 2009.

• Danielle M. Roemer, Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale
• Gregory J. Rubinson, The fiction of Rushdie, Barnes, Winterson, and Carter: breaking cultural and literary boundaries in the work of four postmodernists (McFarland, 2005) ISBN 0786422874. ISBN 9780786422876.
• Lorna Sage, Angela Carter (Plymouth, England: Northcote House, with British Council, 1994)
• Ali Smith, Essays on the Art of Angela Carter: Flesh and the Mirror, Virago Press (2009) ISBN 184408471X. ISBN 9781844084715.
• Lindsey Tucker, Critical Essays on Angela Carter (G.K. Hall, 1998)

Criticism (articles and essays)

A-C

Harriet Blodgett.

• "Fresh Iconography: Subversive Fantasy by Angela Carter." The Review of Contemporary Fiction v. 14 (Fall 1994): pp. 49-55.

Robert Clark.

• "Angela Carter's Desire Machine," Women's Studies, v. 14, no. 2 (1987): pp. 147-161.

D-F

Scott A. Dimovitz.

• "Cartesian Nuts: Rewriting the Platonic Androgyne in Angela Carter's Japanese Surrealism", FemSpec v.6, n.2 (2005), pp.15-31.
• "Angela Carter's Narrative Chiasmus: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and The Passion of New Eve", Genre XLII (Spring/Summer 2009), pp.83-112. (available at the Regis College faculty archive)
• "'I Was the Subject of the Sentence Written on the Mirror': Angela Carter's Short Fiction and the Unwriting of the Psychoanalytic Subject", Literature Interpretation Theory, v.21, pp.1-19 (2010) (available at the Regis College faculty archive)

"Angela Carter's brand of feminist fiction continues to trouble the margins of contemporary feminist discourse. This is especially true in America, where Carter cannot seem to attain the clear canonization she has had in Europe, and even the popular view of Carter in America depends upon a dramatic repression of the discordant parts of her body of work. This American Carter vacillates between two versions. The first persona is the domesticated mother goddess construction, inspire by the Marija Gimbutas branch of seventies feminism, which Carter herself despised for what she saw as its ahistoricizing tendencies. This persona depends almost solely upon her project of retelling traditional fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber, and it seems to be crystallized now by Penguin's choice to run the photo of Carter's hoary-headed self on the cover of its latest American edition. The second persona is a function of the exuberant, if ultimately pessimistic, trickster goddess of patriarchal capitulation offered in the later novels, Nights at the Circus and Wise Children. This latter construction coincides with a general post-Reagan/Thatcher-era post-feminism that attempts a series of endless "subversions" of patriarchy's paper tigers." (first paragraph)

G-J

Janet Garton.

• "Little Red Riding Hood Comes of Age: Or, When the Fantastic Becomes the Feminist." in Essays in Memory of Michael Parkinson and Janine Dakyns (Christopher Smith, ed., & Mike Carr, fwd.) (Norwich: School of Mod. Lang. & European Studies, Univ. of East Anglia, 1996, viii, 390 pp.) (pp. 289-294). (discussing Angela Carter, "The Werewolf", "Red Riding Rood", Marta Tikkanen, Todlluvan (1986), "The Company of Wolves")

Clare Hanson.

• "'The Red Dawn Breaking Over Clapham': Carter and the Limits of Artifice", The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter: Fiction, Femininity, Feminism, ed. Joseph Bristow and Trev Lynn Broughton. Essex: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997, pp.59-72.

Michael Hardin.

• "The Other Other: Self-Definition Outside Patriarchal Institutions in Angela Carter's Wise Children." The Review of Contemporary Fiction. v. 14 (Fall 1994): pp. 77-83.

Elyce Rae Helford.

• "Sizing Up the Body: Body Size and Self-Image in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Molly Keane's Good Behaviour." Feminist Graduate Student Conference ("Parallels and Intersections: Racism and Other Forms of Oppression"). Iowa City, IA; April 1989.

K-M

Brooks Landon.

• "Eve at the End of the World: Sexuality and the Reversal of Expectations in Novels by Joanna Russ, Angela Carter, and Thomas Berger." Erotic Universe: Sexuality and Fantastic Literature, ed. Donald Palumbo. New York: Greenwood, 1986: pp. 61-74.

Merja Makinen.

• "Sexual and Textual Transgression in The Sadeian Woman and The Passion of New Eve," in The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter: Fiction, Femininity, Feminism, ed. Bristow & Broughton, 1997, pp.149-165.

Magali Cornier Michael.

• "Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus: An Engaged Feminism via Subversive Postmodern Strategies", Contemporary Literature, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 492-521

N-Q

Paulina Palmer.

• "From 'Coded Mannequin' to Bird Woman: Angela Carter's Magic Flight", Women Reading Women's Writing, ed. Sue Roe. Brighton, England: Harvester, 1987. pp.177-205.

T-Z

Nicoletta Vallorani.

• "The Body of the City: Angela Carter's The Passion of the New Eve." Science Fiction Studies v. 21 (November 1994), pages 365-379.

Conferences & Meetings

• "The Fairy Tale After Angela Carter" (2009), organized by Stephen Benson

Special issues

• Marvels & Tales, v.24, n.1 (2010): "Special Issue on the Fairy Tale After Angela Carter"
• Marvels & Tales, v.12, n.1 (1998), also published as Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale, edited by Danielle Marie Roemer and Cristina Bacchilega. ISBN 0-8143-2905-5.

Memorials and Obituaries

• "Angela Carter, 1940-92: A Very Good Wizard, a Very Dear Friend" (memorial essay) by Salman Rushdie, March 8, 1992, NYT.

Interviews

• Anna Katsavos, "An Interview with Angela Carter", The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 14, 1994
• Lorna Sage, "Angela Carter Interviewed by Lorna Sage", New Writing, eds. Malcolm Bradbury and Judith Cooke. London: Minerva, 1992. pp.185-193 (a 1988 interview)

Bibliographies

• "An Angela Carter Bibliography" by Joanne M. Gass

Documentaries, Films, etc.

• "Angela Carter's Curious Room" (a 1992 BBC2 Omnibus documentary about Angela Carter)

Websites

• Unofficial Angela Carter Site by Andrew --