Angela Carter and Folk Music

From her unique standpoint as singer-songwriter-scholar, Polly Paulusma examines the influences of Carters 1960s folk singing, unknown until now, on her prose writing. Recent critical attention has focused on Carters relationship with folk/fairy tales, but this book uses a newly available archive containing Carters folk song notes, books, LPs and recordings to change the debate, proving Carter performed folk songs. Placing this archive alongside the album sleeve notes Carter wrote and her diaries and essays, it reimagines Carters prose as a vehicle for the singing voice, and reveals a writing style imbued with songfulness informed by her singing praxis. Reading Carters texts through songs she knew and sang, this book shows, from influences of rhythm, melodic shape, thematic focus, imagery, voice and breath, how Carter steeped her writing with folk songs features to produce canorography: song-infused prose. Concluding with a discussion of Carters profound influence on songwriters, focusing on the author's interview with Emily Portman, this book invites us to reimagine Carters prose as audial event, dissolving boundaries between prose and song, between text and reader, between word and sound, in an ever-renewing act of sympathetic resonance.