Angela Carter (1940 - 1992)
Related: post-feminism - magic realism - British literature
Angela Carter (1940-1992) is best known for her subversive short stories, including her most famous collection, The Bloody Chamber. Carter translated the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, and wrote the screenplay for Neil Jordan's 1984 film, The Company of Wolves, based on her short story. [Jan 2007]
The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (1979) - Angela Carter [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The Company of Wolves (1984) - Neil Jordan [Amazon.com]
The tangled forest is misty with mystery, the thatched cottages are cute and quaint, and the dashing rogues are devious charmers, but this revision of "Little Red Riding Hood" is not your usual fairy tale. In the troubled dreams of an adolescent girl in the hormonal rush of puberty, it becomes a veritable werewolf story with lush storybook imagery, gothic horror flourishes, and decidedly sexual implications. Director Neil Jordan, who collaborated with author Angela Carter in this 1985 adaptation of her story, applies a knowing intelligence to the bittersweet tale. The often startling transformation effects may appear primitive compared to modern movies, but the delight is in the dark imagination, dense textures, and fantastical wonders of this dream world. Angela Lansbury is the story-spinning granny and David Warner the understanding woodsman father, and watch for a devilish cameo by a sinister and seductive Terence Stamp. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com essential video
Biography
Angela Carter (May 7, 1940-February 16, 1992) was an English novelist and journalist, known for her post-feminist magical realist works.
Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, she at first worked as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser. She married twice, leaving her first husband using the proceeds of the Somerset Maugham Award for literature and spending two years living in Tokyo. She then explored the United States, Asia and Europe. These experiences had a positive influence on her later writing. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer in residence at universities, including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide and the University of East Anglia.
Carter also contributed many articles to The Guardian, The Independent and New Statesman.
Two of her works have been adapted into films, The Magic Toyshop in 1987, and The Company of Wolves in 1984.
Angela Carter died in 1992 after developing cancer. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Carter [Apr 2005]
The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (1979) - Angela Carter
Sexuality is power. So says the Marquis de Sade, philosopher and pornographer. His virtuous Justine, who keeps to the rules, is rewarded with rape and humiliation; his Juliette, Justine's triumphantly monstrous antithesis, viciously exploits her sexuality.
With brilliance and wit, Angela Carter takes on these outrageous figments of de Sade's extreme imagination and transforms them into symbols of our time: The Hollywood sex goddesses, mothers and daughters, pornography, even the sacred shrines of sex and marriage lie devastatingly exposed before our eyes.
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