Living With Disbelief in the Fictions of Angela Carter

This is a comprehensive study of one of the most important English feminist writers of the twentieth century: Angela Carter. Salman Rushdie has said that Carter's novels "are like nobody else's"; the aim of the work is to explore this singularity by discussing the challenge and richness of her metaphorical style, and by elucidating her uses of intertextuality and theory in terms that are accessible. Rather than focusing on traditional notions of development as a writer, Living with Disbelief in the Fictions of Angela Carter explores the thematic and structural elements that circulate within Carter's considerable oeuvre, thereby presenting an imaginative integration of her fiction and non-fiction. Subjects addressed include social fictions, carnivale, gendered subjectivities, feminist polemic, contemporary theory, and narrative's complicity with myth. Particular attention is paid to the motifs of the 'confidence trick' and the 'lucid game'.