Synopses & Reviews
By reading key Carter texts alongside their Decadent intertexts, Tonkin interrogates the claim that Carter was in thrall to a fetishistic aesthetic antithetical to her feminism. Through historical contextualization of the woman-as-doll, muse and femme fatale, Tonkin tests Carter's own description of her fiction as a form of literary criticism.
About the Author
MAGGIE TONKIN teaches nineteenth and twentieth century literary studies on a sessional basis at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She has published articles on Angela Carter and on contemporary Australian fiction, and also writes journalism and reviews for the Australian dance press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Introduction: Fetishism or Fictional Critique? Olympia's Revenge: The Woman-Doll Dyad in The Magic ToyshopThe Muse Exhumed: The Brief History of a Trope Re-Ambiguating the Muse in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor HoffmanThe "Poe-etics" of Decomposition: "The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe" and the Reading Effect Musing on Baudelaire: "Black Venus" and the Poet as Dead Beloved Whose Fantasy is the Femme? Dialectical Dames: Thesis and Antithesis in The Sadeian WomanThere Never was a Woman Like Leilah: The Passion of New EveConclusion Bibliography Index