Vertigo of Excess: Angela Carter's Baroque in Peep-Shows and Cinema

Abstract

Angela Carter's work has been interpreted as 'Victorian bric-a-brac' around the publication of her biography (October 2016). However, her fiction is far from either 'Victorian' or 'bric-a-brac. Being in the 'demythologising business', as she said herself, Carter's fiction outs the outdated lies of modernity by pushing them to their limits and beyond. This thesis researches the element of the Baroque as a critical tool in Carter's fiction. Consecutively, this thesis analyses in relation to Carter's work the figure of the peep-show, the role of the visual project of the surrealists, and the disruptive quality of cinema to the culture of peeping. Not only looking, is important in Carter's demythologising project, but also looking at looking. By blowing up images from cultural myth, Carter uses her fiction like a looking glass to not only point out the fabricated lies, but also to burn them down with the light that shines upon it.