What do Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle, Immanuel Kant, and the Marquis de Sade have in common? Spanning centuries and - when it comes to Plato - millennia, they are key figures of Western philosophy who have discussed ideas of reality, knowledge, existence, the state of nature, and morality, ideas which are central to Angela Carter's novels. In this thesis, I position Carter as a (de)philosophiser, and argue that she deconstructs the pivotal theories of Western philosophy, while also philosophising on the same concepts, contributing a female voice to this overwhelmingly androcentric discipline. In doing so, I contribute the first in- depth discussion of Carter's philosophical intertextuality to Carter criticism, going beyond Carter's explicit references that, to date, have been acknowledged by Carter scholars; although this is an original topic, the originality of my argument is boosted by my references t) the archival material that comprises the Angela Carter Papers Collection. The thesis is structured according to Carter's engagement with the range of Western thinkers aforementioned, focusing on Plato's impact on Heroes and Villains (1969), The infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972) and The Passion of New Eve (1977) in Chapter One, while Chapter Two is dedicated to Carter's analysis of Hobbes and Rousseau's arguments in Heroes and Villains. In Chapter Three I discuss Descartes (in relation to Doctor Hoffman), Locke (vis-a-vis Shadow Dance, 1966, New Eve, and Nights at the Circus, 1984), and Hume, with reference to Several Perceptions (1968) and Love (written 1969, published 1971). Wittgenstein and Ryle's impact on Doctor Hoffman and Carter's time in Japan are examined in Chapter Four. The fifth and final chapter concentrates on Carter and moral philosophy, paying particular attention to Kant and Sade and discussing Shadow Dance, Several Perceptions, and Love, as well as Doctor Hoffman and The Sadeian Woman (1979).

Title page, table of contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / This thesis examines conflicting claims made about the fiction of British feminist writer Angela Carter." --p. iii. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1280849 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2007

Title page, table of contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / This thesis examines conflicting claims made about the fiction of British feminist writer Angela Carter." --p. iii. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1280849 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2007

This study examines Angela Carter’s demythologising of origin myths and will investigate the extent to which her fictions offer viable alternatives that allow for productive representations of women and gender relations outside patriarchal paradigms. In the first half of the thesis (Chapters 1-3), I will primarily focus on how several of Carter’s earlier texts deconstruct existing mythical spaces, particularly the biblical creation story in Genesis. The Genesis myth is central to socio-historical constructions of gendered identities, and in itself, central to Carter’s imagination. She repeatedly returns to this myth in her challenging of the ways in which patriarchal narratives construct violent relations between self and other, specifically where ‘woman’ is situated as the repressed other of male desires and fears. Alongside her demythologising of Genesis, Carter deconstructs Freudian myths of sexual maturation, exposing where these also set up a relationship of antagonism or enmity between the sexes. Although Chapter One will explore how Carter attempts to revise these origin myths from a positive stance, Two and Three will focus on the inherent difficulties faced by the female subject in her struggle against patriarchal myths and their violent oppression of female autonomy. The second half of the thesis (Chapters 4-6) will shift to an investigation of how Carter’s later texts set up both possibilities and challenges for women when attempting to construct their own narratives of origin. Through her problematising of matriarchal myths and feminist fantasies of self-creation, Carter emphasises the need for confronting limitations rather than celebrating transgressions as entirely liberating. The thesis will conclude, however, with an examination of where Carter’s own attempts at remythologising opens up an alternative space, or ‘elsewhere’, of feminine desires that allows for a refiguring of the female subject as well as more reciprocal relations between the sexes.

Yuen Siu Fung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-162). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter One: --- Re-imagining Female Subjectivity beyond Bodily Inscriptions --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Cultural Body and Female Agency: The Transformation of Identity in Jasmine --- p.21 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- Woman and Unwoman: Reconstructing Subjectivity in The Handmaids Tale --- p.64 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- Beyond Bodily Defined Identity: Per/Re-forming Man/Woman Relationship in Nights at the Circus --- p.114 / Chapter Chapter Five: --- "In Search of Fulfilment, Satisfaction and Development" --- p.150 / Bibliography --- p.157

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2017-03-31T11:46:07Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Daniel Françoli Yago.pdf: 4532120 bytes, checksum: bbf6172e1fcaff3d65e6b07ea244f616 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-31T11:46:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Daniel Françoli Yago.pdf: 4532120 bytes, checksum: bbf6172e1fcaff3d65e6b07ea244f616 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-22 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq / This dissertation aims to make a genealogy of the process of conversion of prodigious and wonderful figures of the past in monstrous and aberrative figures in the West. In order to do so, we accomplished three stages of our itinerary: the paradigm of the Greco-Roman and medieval world of wonders, the birth of the grotesque aesthetic in the light of the modern civilizational process and the disciplinary era of the bodies, moment of therapy and hospitalization of the so-called monsters. In a second moment of our research, we aimed to comprehend the look that women literature concedes to these prodigies in an attempt to synthesize their uses in a critical relation to the patriarchy. The process of disenchantment of the stranger as a facet of this genealogy intersects with aspects of the advent of modern patriarchy, especially in what it refers to the ways of treating its alteritary figures. Recently, such intersection made monsters, freaks, prodigies and marvels described in the women's literature occupy more potent and positive places, often metaphorical, to expose and re-signify various aspects of the female condition. We focused on Angela Carter and, more specifically, her oeuvre from 1984, Nights on the Circus, because her characters demonstrate dynamics of an inverse process to the abjection of the stranger: instead of being disenchanted, they were figures that re-enchanted the world by means of a reappropriation of its prodigiousness / Esta dissertação objetivou fazer uma genealogia do processo de conversão das figuras prodigiosas e maravilhosas do passado em figuras monstruosas e aberrativas no Ocidente. Para tanto, cumpriu três etapas em seu itinerário: o paradigma do mundo de maravilhas greco-romano e medieval, o nascimento da estética do grotesco à luz do processo civilizatório moderno e a era disciplinar dos corpos, momento auge da teratologia e da hospitalização dos chamados monstros. Em um segundo momento de nossa pesquisa, também objetivamos compreender o olhar da literatura de mulheres para essas figuras prodigiosas em uma tentativa de sintetizar seus usos em relação a uma crítica do ideário patriarcal. O processo de desencantamento do estranho como faceta desta genealogia intersecciona com aspectos de surgimento do patriarcado moderno, em especial no que se refere a uma forma de tratamento de suas figuras alteritárias. Tal cruzamento fez com que mais recentemente monstros, freaks, prodígios e maravilhas descritos na literatura de mulheres ocupassem funções potentes e positivas, e frequentemente metafóricas, para a exposição e ressignificação de diversos aspectos da condição feminina. Por fim, nos focamos na autora Angela Carter e, mais especificamente, em sua obra Noites no Circo, de 1984, por compreendermos que suas personagens demonstram dinâmicas de um processo inverso à pejoração do estranho: ao invés de desencantadas, são figuras que reencantam o mundo por meio de uma reapropriação de sua prodigiosidade