Bloody Chamber Research Articles

Playing the Female Fool: Metamorphoses of the Fool from Fireworks to The Bloody Chamber

Playing the Female Fool: Metamorphoses of the Fool from Fireworks to The Bloody Chamber

Jak przerobić baśnie na zaangażowane utopie? Twórczość prozatorska Angeli Carter


 
 
 
 Celem artykułu jest przeprowadzenie analizy dwóch powieści Angeli Carter, Magicznego sklepu z zabawkami (1967) i Mądrych dzieci (1991), a także wybranych baśni/opowiadań pisarki, na czele z Krwawą komnatą (1979) i Towarzystwem wilków (1977). Autorka tekstu ukazuje, jak przekształcanie popularnych motywów baśniowych lub fabuł powieściowych (z uwzględnieniem takich gatunków jak powieść inicjacyjna, powieść obyczajowa, powieść o artystach, tu także artystkach) zamienia je w utopie i to z wyraźnie feministyczną sygnaturą. Rozwiązania proponowane przez Carter, często wzbogacane o elementy utopii albo dystopii, mają na celu nie tylko zakwestionowanie fallogocentrycznych reguł; prowadzą także do pytań, czy jest ono w ogóle możliwe.
 
 
 

Female Objects and Feminist Consciousness for the Purpose to Awake Readers’ Awareness: A Comparative Analysis between Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Anne Sexton’s Transformations

The female object, as a symbolic image created by male authors to reduce the threat brought by females towards patriarchy, has become a method to express male sexual and domestic fantasies. However, in the fairy tale adaptation by two mid-twentieth century female authors-Angela Carter and Anne Sexton, the female object is used to evoke feminist consciousness. Although former studies have covered some feminism issues, for instance, the feminist awareness through the mirror image in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, and the direct metaphors such as “doll” and “soap pop” which lead to female objectification in Anne Sexton’s Transformations, little research has compared the distinctive psychological impacts that the narrative forms between the two mentioned texts have on readers. In the first section of this paper, how both authors deconstruct the female stereotypes and how they reinterpret modes of female agency in the original Grimm’s fairy tales have been examined. Based on the writers’ perspective, the first section would also explore the expression of female objects in their works. As for the second section, I would mainly focus on the psychoanalysis of Lacan’s mirror stages, and yet cover the awakening processes presented in the mirror images and symbols composed in the two adaptations. In the third section, the different narrative strategies utilized by Carter and Sexton in order to stimulate readers’ responses towards feminist consciousness would be illustrated.

Out of Time: Time-Travel Tropes Write (through) Climate Change

Out of Time: Time-Travel Tropes Write (through) Climate Change

Translation, Illustration, Transcreation. From the Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault to Classic Fairy Tales Retold

The article proposes that the fairy-tale tradition unfolds as a collective, dynamic and transformative process of transcreation across languages, contexts and media for different purposes and publics. It notably draws attention to the role of translators, illustrators and publishers whose collaborations have produced new versions of the familiar stories in print form, which have in turn inspired highly innovative projects for children and adults reflecting personal takes on the stories. As a case study, I trace the editorial history of Angela Carter’s translation of The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977) illustrated by Martin Ware, which paved the way for Carter’s own collection of ‘ stories about fairy stories ’, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979), in contrapuntal fashion. The translation was reissued with child-friendly illustrations by Michael Foreman in Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales (1982), also published by Victor Gollancz, which later fed into Classic Fairy Tales Retold and Illustrated by Michael Foreman (2005)1.

Liminalumas Angelos Carter apsakymų rinkinyje Kruvinasis kambarys

The article explores the theme of liminality – liminal experience and liminal human beings in Angela Carter’s collection of stories The Bloody Chamber in an attempt to reveal the complexity of human – female and male – identity, its transformations and outcomes. In literary and cultural theory, liminality is defined as a “space or state which is situated in between other, usually more clearly defined, spaces, periods or identities.” Thus, liminal human beings do not have one form of existence, they are naturally ambiguous. In the stories, Carter investigates liminality through half-beings who represent two sides of personality which are at odds with each other and do not make a harmonious whole, as well as the image of the bloody chamber. Moreover, neither of the character’s states is fully accepted. Carter considers the ways how to deal with each of them in order to regain integrity of mind and claim their full humanity.

A Feminist Post-Narratological Inquiry into Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves”

Angela Carter, tüm ortodoks düşünce sistemleri, inanış ve uygulamalara savaş açmış, 20. Yüzyıl edebiyatında alışılmışın dışında kalan edebi figürlerden biridir. Carter’ın cesurca savaştığı bu uygulamalardan biri de mitlerdir. Mitler, Carter gibi yazarları üzerine çekecek sosyokültürel sınırlar çizerler. Özellikle de cinsel politikadaki güçler dağılımıyla ilgilenen Carter, geleneksel mitleri yeniden okuyarak, içlerinde barındırdıkları ideolojik dokuyu yapıbozuma uğratmak ve içkin amaçlarını boşa çıkarmak üzere bu mitleri yeniden yazar. Bu bakımdan, masallarda kadınların nasıl temsil edildiği ve bu temsillerin nasıl evrensel doğrulara dönüştürüldüğünü anlamak ve anlatmak için masal geleneğini keşfetmeye koyulur. Yenilikçi eserlerinden Kanlı Oda ve Diğer Öyküler’de de bu temsilleri çürütmek ve cinsiyet normlarını yapısöküme uğratmak amacıyla masalları yeniden yazar. Bu çalışma, bu koleksiyondaki yeniden yazılan masallardan biri olan “Kurtlar Arasında” öyküsünü feminist post-anlatıbilimsel açıdan incelemeyi, bunu yaparken de öncelikle Propp’un masal incelemesi gibi geleneksel anlatıbilimsel yöntemlerin yapıbozumcu yeniden yazımlara uygulanamazlığını tartışıp ardından Carter’ın öyküsünü, öykünün orijinali kaynağı Grimm Kardeşler’in “Kırmızı Başlıklı Kız” masalıyla karşılaştırmalı olarak ele almayı amaçlamaktadır.

Feminist Re-writing in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber is the first well received work of Angela Carter. Angela Carter, the feminist writer of twentieth century presents stories free from patriarchal influence. She has re-written the popular folk and fairy tales like Red Riding Hood, Blue Beard, Sleeping Beauty in feminist perspective. In the course of re-writing the tales, she alters the original plot to give an unexpected end. The Bloody Chamber and other short stories published in 1979 presents the modern feminist want for a strong woman in literature. She has employed magical realism in her stories to give a realistic view of the modern world along with magical elements. She has undermined the gender roles of masculinity and femininity. Blue Beard is a folk tale written by Charles Perrault in which a man named Blue Beard murders his wives. This plot is taken by Angela Carter and she has created strong, independent and witty women characters. This paper discuses the effect of patriarchal narration and fruitful result when the phallocentrism is removed from the plot.

Motherhood, Sexuality, and the (Fe)Male Gaze in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

In my paper, I want to explore the idea that the heroine in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber is a “woman in process” (Kathleen E. B. Manley 1998, 71), focusing on three main aspects connected to this journey of self-discovery. One is the presence of the mother and the mother-daughter relationship. Another is sexuality and how the heroine’s attitude towards it changes over the course of the story. Finally, the third is the significance of gazing, proposing that by the end of the story, a female gaze emerges.

L’immaginario sovvertito. Ovvero, le fiabe di Angela Carter

The essay represents a re- evaluation of Angela Carter’s short story “The Bloody Chamber” as a powerful reversal of accepted gender patterns and a subversion of codified imaginary characters. Particular relevance is given to the moral–an essential element of fairy tales—which changes according to the modernized setting of the folktale. The short story is analyzed in the light of folkloric tradition and modern behavioral psychology highlighting the symbolic role of background imaginary elements–the mirrors, the closet–and the disturbingly morbid undertones of the protagonist’s relationship with her serial-killer husband. Gender and family roles are overturned: sorority and motherhood defy and defeat romantic love– prince charming–and patriarchal tyranny–Bluebeard–and the fairy tale pattern suddenly becomes obsolete.

Od zarobljenice do zveri - feminističko podrivanje ženskih likova iz bajki u priči "Tigrova nevesta" Andžele Karter

This paper elaborates on Angela Carter's subversion of fairy-tale genre in tale from Bloody Chamber and Other Stories titled the Tiger's Bride. The method of research combines researching relevant theoretical literature and thorough text analysis. The primary concern of this paper is subversion of female characters in fairy tales as a means of advocating feminist attitudes. Relevant passages are used to exemplify Carter's feminism, with special reference to subverted roles of heroine of tale. The female protagonist's transition from being a captive to becoming a beast is analysed, and her reinvented roles discussed and compared to traits of heroine from classic Beauty and Beast story written by De Beaumont. This is done in order to uncover multilayered structure of Carter's work and hopefully determine author's genuine purpose in subverting fairy-tale genre as well as message she wanted to convey.

샤를 페로의 「푸른 수염」과 안젤라 카터의 「피로 물든 방」에 나타난 젠더 위계와 성 욕망 비교: 호기심과 섹슈얼리티를 중심으로

샤를 페로의 「푸른 수염」과 안젤라 카터의 「피로 물든 방」에 나타난 젠더 위계와 성 욕망 비교: 호기심과 섹슈얼리티를 중심으로

Once upon a time on the air: i radiodrammi di Angela Carter

The rewriting, often a contraposition (critical, ideological, and historical) to another text, is at the basis of Angela Carter’s dramatic works. For Angela Carter, dramatic rewriting is not the transposition of her short stories, it is not a mere adaptation to the radio, to the cinema, or to television, but a proper rewriting of her narrative material. This essay focuses on Angela Carter’s works for radio, particularly those radio plays, such as The Company of Wolves, Puss in Boots and Vampirella, whose narrative version was published in The Bloody Chamber. Carter’s radio plays are built, as she wrote, “not for creating dramas on a theatrical model so much to create complex, many-layered narratives that play tricks with time”, having in mind that the radio, like narrative, does not show, but suggests. What was fascinating to Angela Carter was the third dimension of the radio, the sound, and the shift from a point of view” to a “point of hearing”.

Lacan as a Reader of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

In her modern classic Bloody Chamber Angela Carter has reworked many classic tales of western culture, covering tales from Charles Perrault to Grimm brothers. In her rewriting of these tale Carter does not merely reproduce these texts for a modern audience but she adds a political, sexual, and psychological edge to them. This article looks at three selected tales from this collection ( The Tiger’s Bride , The Bloody Chamber , and The Lady of the House of Love ) through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory in order to unveil their hidden psychological significance. By drawing on Lacanian key concepts such as “symbolic castration” and “dimension of ate” this paper aims to shed light on the disavowed and unconscious beliefs that constitute the psychological subtext of these narratives and regulate the actions of their characters.

La reconstruction d’un univers merveilleux

Reconstructing a Marvelous World: On the Translation of Angela Carter’s Metaphors into French and Italian This essay sets out to analyze the re-construction of a marvelous world in the translations of Angela Carter’s works (1940-1992). It does so by focusing on metaphors, seen as cognitive and stylistic elements which are both relevant in the construction of such world, and emblematic of the overall translation strategy. Our parallel corpus consists of a selection of stories from Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and other stories (1979) and their three translations (two into Italian, one into French). The stories in this collection offer a profound rewriting of Perrault’s tales and subvert the canon by adding an explicit sexual dimension to these stories and questioning male supremacy. We shall illustrate the strategies implemented by the Italian and French translators to recreate the uncanny images and associations that deliberate metaphors can trigger in the minds of their readers. We aim at drawing a few tentative conclusions about the construction of marvelous through metaphors, as well as on the translation approaches to such elements and works.

Non-Identity and Parodoxicality in Angela Carter’s <i>The Bloody Chamber</i>

Angela Carter (1940-92) in her famous short story,The Bloody Chamber, depicts a protagonist whose identity seems to be a predetermined sign in a signifying loop from which she can make no escape. In the first part of our paper, we attempt to show how The protagonist’s ensuing psychological tension is aggravated by the conflict which she feels between her ideal ego (as an innocent girl) and her ego-ideal (a rare talent for corruption) and which leads her to unrelenting introspection and interior dialogue with her existential states. Such interior dialogue provides the protagonist with an existential ground on which she empties all her life events of their presence by signifying (or verbalizing) them through Derridean Differance. Therefore, her interior dialogue results in non-identity in her subjectivization both in the realm of signs and of (social) events. Then, we focus on the protaganist’s paradoxical urges spontaneously outflowed from within which, by resisting symbolization, provide her with the possibility of becoming what she thinks she has never been and allow for her moments of self-determination. Finally, we illustrate how such psychological odyssey takes shape in the Gothic setting which arouses, in Lacanian terminology, pre-symbolic tendencies and which involves the coincidence of Gothic horror with the horrors of social reality.

Demythologizing Feminine Sexuality in Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” and The Sadeian Woman

Demythologizing Feminine Sexuality in Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” and The Sadeian Woman

ANGELA CARTER’S THE BLOODY CHAMBER: A FEMINIST STYLISTIC APPROACH

Stylistics, the study of a writer’s style, has incorporated various approaches, especially in the last few decades. Therefore, feminist stylistics based on the theories of feminist criticism appears as a significant approach defining “woman” and her place not only in society, but also in language. By examining male domination in society and literary works, feminist stylistics tries to present a counter-image of women both in language and social construction. The tendency of current feminist stylistics mostly focuses on the idea that there is a significant “women’s writing and style” that differs from men’s. These linguistic and thematic differences that are called “genderlect” or “gendered sentence” in women’s writing are the main interest of feminist stylistics. This study will depict the “genderlect” and “gendered” style in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber . Carter’s The Bloody Chamber , a collection of re-written traditional fairy tales, “extracts the latent content from the traditional stories” in Carter’s words. Ten stories in the collection handle the topics of marriage, sexuality, gender roles, and female liberty with a subverting point of view. In this article, three stories narrated by female first-person narrators in this collection will be analyzed in terms of lexico-semantic items in the narration, and Carter’s style as an example of écriture féminine will be examined with regard to feminist stylistics.

Rewritings/refoldings/refleshings: fictive publics and the material gesture of defamiliarization

This paper develops the concept of fictive publics through the proximate gestures of rewriting, refolding and refleshing of certain characters. Feminist and queer rewritings of canonical literary texts have become a fairly lucrative area of publication, from Angela Carter’s now classic fairy tale collection The Bloody Chamber (1979) to Kathy Acker’s Eurydice in the Underworld (1997), and a more recent spate of mythological rewritings including Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy (2007) and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lavinia (2008). The intervention into patriarchal mythical structures via rewriting has been well documented, but the ways in which this interrelates with the philosophical feminist and new materialist projects of the radical rewriting of modernity itself has not yet been investigated. In this paper, I argue that a paradoxical relationality structures the concept of fictive publics, which is analogous to the modernist gesture of defamiliarization. Publics presuppose a proximity of strangers, and the concept of proximity is vital to queer studies. Rewriting is constituted by a particular type of radical and contentious movement which has significance for feminist thought. Using these examples, I explore the creative process of radical rewriting as a material gesture of intervention.

Erotic Infidelities: Love and Enchantment in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

Book Review| July 01 2016 Erotic Infidelities: Love and Enchantment in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber Erotic Infidelities: Love and Enchantment in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. By Kimberly J. Lau. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015. Pp. x + 180.). Victoria L. M. Harkavy Victoria L. M. Harkavy Independent Folklorist Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Folklore (2016) 129 (513): 356–357. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.129.513.0356 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Victoria L. M. Harkavy; Erotic Infidelities: Love and Enchantment in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. Journal of American Folklore 1 July 2016; 129 (513): 356–357. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.129.513.0356 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Folklore Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.