Angela Carter and Surrealism

Anna Watz is Senior Lecturer in English, Linköping University, Sweden.

• 1. Introduction 2. ‘The Problem of Woman’: Surrealist Femininities and Masculinities 3. The Surrealist Uncanny in Shadow Dance 4. Surrealist Desire in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman 5. The Sadeian Woman and Surréalisme et sexualité 6. The Feminist Libertarian Aesthetic of The Passion of New Eve 7. Conclusion: Feminist-Surrealist Bricolage and Performativity

"Angela Carter and Surrealism offers a tonic to cultural, scholarly and political malaise. Having read and digested this book in detail, I am left feeling that feminism has been vindicated and revived." --Catriona McAra, Leeds College of Art"Anna Watz provides a compelling and original account of Angela Carter’s complex relationship to surrealism. Uncovering new archival material on Carter’s engagement with Xavière Gauthier’s pathbreaking feminist study of surrealism, and through close readings of the fiction and nonfiction, Warz examines Carter’s development of a libertarian aesthetic and its important debt to the politics and aesthetics of surrealism. Her book intelligently builds on the field of Carter criticism whilst offering new insights into the debates and critical legacies ignited by the surrealist movement." --Natalya Lusty, The University of Sydney"This is a major study of Angela Carter’s writing and thought, which offers an illuminating cross-section of feminism and avant-garde writing in France and the United Kingdom. Angela Carter and Surrealism works across the lines of contact and contention between the surrealist and Tel Quel movements, between Beauvoir-era feminism and poststructuralist feminism. This is an important study of the second wave of avant-garde activity of the 1960s and 1970s that will be required reading for students and scholars of surrealism, feminism, and British fiction." --Jonathan P. Eburne, The Pennsylvania State University