Beauty or a Beast? Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus
Transgressing Seemingly Established Concepts of Beauty, Good,
and Evil

k 2020

Beauty or a Beast? Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus Transgressing Seemingly Established Concepts of Beauty, Good, and Evil

KOTUCZ, Barbora

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

Language

English

Type of outcome

Prezentace na konferencích

Field of Study

60206 Specific literatures

Country of publisher

Czech Republic

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

References:

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

Abstract

V originále

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 MU

Name: Researching Communication in English: Paradigms, Strategies, Developments - II (Acronym: ReComE 2020)

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A

Citovat

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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   author = {Kotucz, Barbora},
   booktitle = {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},
   keywords = {Angela Carter; Nights at the Circus; transgression; boundaries},
   language = {eng},
   title = {Beauty or a Beast? Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus Transgressing Seemingly Established Concepts of Beauty, Good, and Evil},
   url = {https://anglistika.phil.muni.cz/brno2020},
   year = {2020}
}

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N2  - 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.
ER  -

KOTUCZ, Barbora. Beauty or a Beast? Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus Transgressing Seemingly Established Concepts of Beauty, Good, and Evil. In \textit{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.

Detailed Information on Publication Record