KOTUCZ, Barbora. Beauty or a Beast? Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus Transgressing Seemingly Established Concepts of Beauty, Good, and Evil. In 11th Brno International Conference of English, American and Canadian Studies : "Breaking the Boundaries : In Between Texts, Cultures and Conventions", 12–14 February, 2020, Brno, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. 2020.
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Basic information
Original name Beauty or a Beast? Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus Transgressing Seemingly Established Concepts of Beauty, Good, and Evil
Authors KOTUCZ, Barbora.
Edition 11th Brno International Conference of English, American and Canadian Studies : "Breaking the Boundaries : In Between Texts, Cultures and Conventions", 12–14 February, 2020, Brno, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, 2020.
Other information
Original language English
Type of outcome Presentations at conferences
Field of Study 60206 Specific literatures
Country of publisher Czech Republic
Confidentiality degree is not subject to a state or trade secret
WWW URL
Organization unit Faculty of Arts
Keywords (in Czech) Angela Carter; Noci v cirkuse; transgrese; hranice
Keywords in English Angela Carter; Nights at the Circus; transgression; boundaries
Tags International impact, Reviewed
Changed by Changed by: Mgr. Jana Pelclová, Ph.D., učo 39970. Changed: 3/4/2021 09:46.
Abstract
When it comes to breaching boundaries, Angela Carter’s magical realist writing, especially the novel Nights at the Circus, offers a palette of seemingly established notions deconstructed as soon as her stories begin. Omnipresent elements of the carnivalesque both underline and undermine the absurdity of the magical which, paradoxically, features concepts inherent to everyday ordinary life of an individual’s mind. Embodiments of these ideas, such as the winged woman Fevvers – the central figure protagonist in Nights at the Circus – epitomizing the concept of incredulous beauty, seem to constantly shatter the reader’s recognition of these abstract notions as understood and accepted as somehow established in society’s common mind. Fevvers is presented as relativizing the concept of beauty, being regarded as both a unique jewel hatched from an egg destined for high life and a beast designed to spend her life in the “Museum of Women Monsters”. One can barely find Carter’s own definitions of such notions but is left rather insecure about how easily she manages to break what the reader thought was an established image in one’s mind. This transgressive power also includes the concepts of good and evil, whose definitions and representations become as obscure as the concept of beauty.
Links
MUNI/A/1204/2019, interní kód MUName: Researching Communication in English: Paradigms, Strategies, Developments - II (Acronym: ReComE 2020)
Investor: Masaryk University, Category A
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