Decadent Daughters and Monstrous Mothers: Angela Carter and European Gothic

Decadent daughters and monstrous mothers interrogates the vexed question of Angela Carters feminist politics through the dusty lens of European Gothic. It illuminates her ambivalent relation to some of her most contentious European literary forebears, reveals her rich knowledge of French literature and offers fresh insights into her literary practices afforded by newly available archival material.

This book analyses Carters textual engagements with a dirty lineage of European Gothic that can be mapped from the Marquis de Sades obsession with desecration and defilement, through Baudelaires perverse decompositions of the muse and decadent imaginings of infernal femininity, to surrealisms violent dreams of abjection. It argues that Carters most troublesome engagements with her European Gothic forefathers are unexpectedly those which are most vital to a consideration of her feminist politics. Decadent daughters and monstrous mothers will be of interest to researchers and students working on contemporary womens writing, the Gothic and comparative literature.