_________________________________________________________________________Swansea University E-Theses Angela Carter's (de)philosophising of Western thought. Yeandle, Heidi How to cite: _________________________________________________________________________ Yeandle, Heidi (2014) Angela Carter's (de)philosophising of Western thought.. thesis, Swansea University. http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42410 Use policy: _________________________________________________________________________ This item is brought to you by Swansea University. Any person downloading material is agreeing to abide by the terms of the repository licence: copies of full text items may be used or reproduced in any format or medium, without prior permission for personal research or study, educational or non-commercial purposes only. The copyright for any work remains with the original author unless otherwise specified. The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holder. Permission for multiple reproductions should be obtained from the original author. Authors are personally responsible for adhering to copyright and publisher restrictions when uploading content to the repository. Please link to the metadata record in the Swansea University repository, Cronfa (link given in the citation reference above.) http://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/ris-support/ Angela Carter’s (de)philosophising of Western Thought Heidi Yeandle Submitted to Swansea University in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Swansea University 2014 ProQuest Number: 10798118 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10798118 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract 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 \oice to this overwhelmingly androcentric discipline. In doing so, I contribute the first in- cepth 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 to the archival material that comprises the Angela Carter Papers Collection. The thesis is structured according to Carter’s engagement with the range of Western blinkers aforementioned, focusing on Plato’s impact onHeroes 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). Contents Inxoduction Let’s Get Philosophical Chapter One Plato: Utopias and Universals, Similes and Cinemas Chapter Two Hobbes and Rousseau: Surviving the Apocalypse in Heroes and Villains Chapter Three Descartes, Locke, and Hume: The Cogito, Blank Slates, and Causation Chapter Four Wittgenstein and Ryle: Names, Signposts, and Currency in Doctor Hoffman Chapter Five Kent, Sade, and Moral Philosophy: Duties and Perversions Ccnclusion Bibliography Acknowledgements When I graduated from my BA (Hons) in 2010, one of the speakers at the ceremony compared undergraduate students to Formula One drivers, saying that a driver’s team plays a key role in the success of a driver, just as a student’s family is central to a student’s achievement. The same metaphor applies to writing a Ph.D. thesis, as a range of people - in my department and College, as well as friends and family - have been instrumental in helping me complete this work. To begin with, I would like to thank the AHRC for funding me for the last three years, as this has allowed me to dedicate my time to academic studies and to gain experience that I otherwise may have missed out on. The staff at the British Library, where the Angela Carter Papers Collection is archived, have also been incredibly helpful. Thanks also to Emily Blewitt, for helping me with the proof-reading stage. There are a number of people at Swansea University whom I need to acknowledge, both staff and students. The RIAH and APECS staff have been fundamental to supporting postgraduate students in the College, and on a more personal level, Daniel Mattingly and Hannah Sams have been there for moral support and cups of tea - or, I should say, hot chocolate. A number of staff members have given me support as well, including Professor Liz Herbert-McAvoy and Dr Roberta Magnani, as well as Dr Fritz-Gregor Herrmann for giving me advice on Plato, and Dr Mario Von Der Ruhr for helping me get to grips with Wittgenstein. Thanks to Dr Richard Robinson as well, my second supervisor, for feedback on earlier chapters of this thesis. I would also like to thank Helen Snaith, a fellow Carter Ph.D. candidate, colleague, and friend, for her help and support over the last three years. In terms of my institution, the most important person to thank is Dr Sarah Gamble, my supervisor, not just for her academic guidance but for her moral support, and for introducing me to Angela Carter in the first place! More broadly, thanks to Lisa Appignanesi and Dr Charlotte Crofts for their advice, as well as the support from a range of other Ph.D. candidates and Swansea University undergraduate students, all courtesy of Twitter. Thank you to Professor Caroline Franklin and Professor Lucie Armitt for examining my thesis, and for their help with perfecting it. On a more personal note, my friends have been incredibly supportive of my studies, and have probably learnt a lot more about Angela Carter than they ever wanted to in the process. I haven’t got the words to thank them enough, but thanks to Johanna Dellay, Romi George, Emma Meek, and Kirsty Rowles for being there and helping me to take my mind off work. I would also like to thank my Dad and grandparents (past and present) for supporting me with my studies, as well as my Mother, for giving an Angela Carter novel a try and for continually challenging me to develop my feminist viewpoint. Last, but by no means least, thanks to my husband Paul King for his endless support. Words cannot express how much I appreciate the help he has given me throughout all my studies. Thank you for helping all of me. Introduction: Let’s Get Philosophical I do think fiction should be asking the great, unanswerable, adolescent questions. (Carter in Evans 1992: unpaginated) Philosophy enables us to speak plausibly of everything. (Carter 1962-63 Journal MS88899/1/88: unpaginated) Angela Carter (1940-92) is renowned for her intertextuality - the wealth of allusions to and citations from a plethora of texts, from William Shakespeare’sHamlet to Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and Andre Breton’s Manifestoes of Surrealism, that characterise her work. These influences span a range of disciplines, from literature, film, and art, to popular culture. Carter’s ‘dizzying intertextuality’ (Britzolakis 1997: 50) is, therefore, a main feature of Carter scholarship. Early discussions of Carter’s work, for instance - such as the succession of monographs in the late 1990s by Sarah Gamble (1997), Alison Lee (1997), Linden Peach (1998),1 and Aidan Day (1998) - broadly examine Carter’s intertextuality, and emphasise the range of Carter’s interests rather than penetrate beneath the surface of specific citations and allusions. Over time, critical discussions of Carter’s writing have become more specialised, analysing the influence of particular writers, movements, and genres, upon her work. For example, Rebecca Munford’s edited collection Re-Visiting Angela Carter: Texts, Contexts, Intertexts (2006) is dedicated (as the title indicates) to providing more in-depth discussions of Carter’s intertextuality, including chapters on Jean-Luc Godard, surrealism, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe, amongst others .2 As Munford says in the Introduction, the aim of her volume ‘is to open up new dialogues about Carter’s imaginative procedures and writing strategies by offering concerted and sustained readings of some of her specific influences and intertexts’, rather than to provide ‘an exhaustive account’ of all of her interests (Munford 2006: 13). The more recent Angela Carter: New Critical Readings (2012), edited by Sonya Andermahr and Lawrence Phillips, also puts an emphasis on Carter’s intertextuality, saying that the ‘collection goes a long way towards fulfilling [Alison] Easton’s “wish list’” (Andermahr and Phillips 2012: 2).