Publication: The way cultural values are reflected in Angela Carter’ s Nights at the Circus and Wise Children
Abstract
Bu tezin amacı, İngiliz yazar Angela Carter'ın son iki kitabinda metinlerarasındalık, yeniden yazma ve yapıbozma gibi postmodern stratejilerin patriarkal toplumu tersyüz etmek için nasıl kullandığını araştırmaktır. 1984 yılında yayınlanan Nights at the Circus, fantaziden yola çıkarak kadın vücudunun ve kadın kimliğinin nasıl öteki konumuna ve bir obje haline getirildiğini araştırır. 1991 yılında yayınlanan son kitabı Wise Children ise, kadın kimliğinin nasıl öteki olarak görülüp gayri-meşru konumuna getirildiğini parodi kullanarak analiz eder. Tezde bu iki kitabın patriarkal eğilimin açıklayamadığı şeyleri nasıl marjinalize ettiğini gösterip, aynı zamanda sosyal yapıları oluşturan süreci yapıbozarak nasıl iyimser bir mesaj verdikleri araştırılacaktır. Her iki eser de eril anlatıları analiz ederek bunlara karşı bir eleştiri oluşturdukları için politik bir boyuta sahiptirler. Tezde, öncelikle bu postmodern stratejilerin teorik temeli ve feminist teoriye katkıları verilmiş, gerçeküstü realizm ve Mikhail Bakhtin'in karnavallaşma üzerine düşünceleri tahrip edici stratejileriyle özetlenmiştir. Daha sonra Carter'ın romanlarında kadın sorununu ele alış biçimine ışık tutmak için feminist teorinin yirminci yüzyılda katettiği yol izlenmiştir. Sonraki bölümlerde ise bu postmodern ve feminist stratejilerin bu iki romanda nasıl kullanıldıkları irdelenmiştir. Sonuç olarak bağımsız bir kadın tarihinin gerekliliği ve toplum içinde farklılıkların beraber varolmasının önemi vurgulanmıştır.
The purpose of this thesis is to discover in Angela Carter's works how postmodern strategies such as intertextuality, rewriting, decentring, and deconstruction have been used as part of her endeavour to debunk and deconstruct the patriarchal society. Her penultimate novel, Nights at the Circus, published in 1984, employs fantasy to discover the bearings for the ways in which the female body and female identity have been pushed into margins and made into an object. Her last novel, Wise Children, published in 1991, employs parody in order to delienate how female identity has been hailed as the Other as woman is ordinarily confined to illegitimacy. Both works will be examined in terms of how the texts make explicit the patriarchal tendency to push to the margins of experience whatever it cannot explain or understand yet evince an optimistic tone in their deconstruction of the processes that produce social structures and shared meanings, evident in the way in which the given realities by female protagonists regarded as the Other disrupt the social construction of women as Woman. Both works have a political dimension in that they provide an acute analysis of and critique to the coercive and stereotyping narratives which uphold misogynist values leaving stratified deposits on the society. The thesis will firstly sketch the course of postmodern theory with its imports to feminist thought and briefly summarise magic realism and Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque with their subversive strategies. Having mapped this, the development of feminist theory in the twentieth century will be backtracked in order to provide an insight to the feminist concerns dealt with in the works of Carter. This established, in the ensuing chapters, Nights at the Circus and Wise Children will be analysed in terms of the way in which they are flooded with and can be read through the concerns of postmodernism and feminism with their subversive strategies. Last, and most tentatively, the thesis will be concluded with laying specific stress on the necessity of herstory and the polyphonic co-existence of differences.
The purpose of this thesis is to discover in Angela Carter's works how postmodern strategies such as intertextuality, rewriting, decentring, and deconstruction have been used as part of her endeavour to debunk and deconstruct the patriarchal society. Her penultimate novel, Nights at the Circus, published in 1984, employs fantasy to discover the bearings for the ways in which the female body and female identity have been pushed into margins and made into an object. Her last novel, Wise Children, published in 1991, employs parody in order to delienate how female identity has been hailed as the Other as woman is ordinarily confined to illegitimacy. Both works will be examined in terms of how the texts make explicit the patriarchal tendency to push to the margins of experience whatever it cannot explain or understand yet evince an optimistic tone in their deconstruction of the processes that produce social structures and shared meanings, evident in the way in which the given realities by female protagonists regarded as the Other disrupt the social construction of women as Woman. Both works have a political dimension in that they provide an acute analysis of and critique to the coercive and stereotyping narratives which uphold misogynist values leaving stratified deposits on the society. The thesis will firstly sketch the course of postmodern theory with its imports to feminist thought and briefly summarise magic realism and Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque with their subversive strategies. Having mapped this, the development of feminist theory in the twentieth century will be backtracked in order to provide an insight to the feminist concerns dealt with in the works of Carter. This established, in the ensuing chapters, Nights at the Circus and Wise Children will be analysed in terms of the way in which they are flooded with and can be read through the concerns of postmodernism and feminism with their subversive strategies. Last, and most tentatively, the thesis will be concluded with laying specific stress on the necessity of herstory and the polyphonic co-existence of differences.