Anna Watz - Angela Carter and Surrealism : a Feminist Libertarian Aesthetic

Angela Carter and Surrealism

In 1972, Angela Carter translated Xavire Gauthiers ground-breaking feminist critique of the surrealist movement, Surralisme et sexualit (1971). Although the translation was never published, the project at once confirmed and consolidated Carters previous interest in surrealism, representation, gender and desire and aided her formulation of a new surrealist-feminist aesthetic. Carters sustained engagement with surrealist aesthetics and politics as well as surrealist scholarship aptly demonstrates what is at stake for feminism at the intersection of avant-garde aesthetics and the representation of women and female desire. Drawing on previously unexplored archival material, such as typescripts, journals and letters, Anna Watzs study is the first to trace the full extent to which Carters writing engages with surrealism and its critical heritage. Watzs book is an important contribution to scholarship on Angela Carter as well as to contemporary feminist debates on surrealism, and will appeal to scholars across the fields of contemporary British fiction, feminism and literary and visual surrealism.

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

Studies in Surrealism

Series Editor: Gavin Parkinson, Courtauld Institute of Art

With scholarly interest in Surrealism greater than ever, the Routledge Studies in Surrealism series serves as a forum for key areas of Surrealist inquiry today. This series extends the ongoing academic and popular interest in Surrealism, evident in recent studies that have rethought established areas of Surrealist activity and engagement, including those of politics, the object, photography, crime and modern physics. Expanding and adding various lines of inquiry, books in the series examine Surrealisms intersections with philosophical, social, artistic and literary themes.

1 Maruja Mallo and the Spanish Avant-Garde

Shirley Mangini

2 Childrens Stories and Child-Time in the Works of Joseph Cornell and the Transatlantic Avant-Garde

Analisa Leppanen-Guerra

3 Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond

Vassiliki Rapti

4 Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism to Contemporary Art

Edited by Anna Dezeuze and Julia Kelly

5 Surrealism and Photography in Czechoslovakia

On the Needles of Days

Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Michael Richardson, and Ian Walker

6 Reading Claude Cahuns Disavowals

Jennifer L. Shaw

7 Consuming Surrealism in American Culture

Dissident Modernism

Sandra Zalman

8 Sacred Surrealism, Dissidence and International Avant-Garde Prose

Vivienne Brough-Evans

9 Angela Carter and Surrealism

A Feminist Libertarian Aesthetic

Anna Watz

Angela Carter and Surrealism

A Feminist Libertarian Aesthetic

Anna Watz

To Ashleigh

Contents

Many people have contributed in various ways to the development of this book. My special thanks to Jonathan P. Eburne and Catriona McAra for your generous and astute comments on the manuscript in its final stages. Your thoughtful suggestions have made this a much better book. I also wish to thank the following readers for valuable comments on and suggestions for individual chapters: Whitney Chadwick, Sara Danius, Stephen Donovan, Xavire Gauthier, David Lomas, Becky Munford, Claire Nally and Angela Smith. Extra grateful acknowledgement to Sarah Gamble and Natalya Lusty, for your insightful feedback and unparalleled generosity. I extend warm thanks to John Ellis for providing me with a DVD copy of The Holy Family Album as well as granting me permission to cite unpublished material relating to its production. I would also like to thank my editor, Margaret Michniewicz, for your patience and support.

I am grateful to Uppsala University and Linkping University for research funding at various stages of completing the manuscript for this book. I am also extremely thankful to the Department of Culture and Communication at Linkping University for granting me financial support to cover the cost of image reproduction.

Finally, I cannot express enough thanks to my children, Hugo and Albin, for filling my life with your curiosity, inventiveness, playfulness and laughter. To my loving partner and most dependable reader, Ashleigh Harris: my deepest gratitude. Without your emotional and intellectual support this project would have been impossible. I dedicate this book to you.

All citations of unpublished material are copyright Angela Carter and reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge and White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN. Parts of was published as Angela Carter and Xavire Gauthiers Surralisme et sexualit in Contemporary Womens Writing 4(2) (2010). I gratefully acknowledge the publishers for allowing me to reprint material.