| The fundamental objective of this research work is the analysis of the connections between various narrative structures taken from the masculine literary tradition and their particular transformation in the novels of two contemporary writers, Angela Carter (1940–1992) and Rikki Ducornet (1943– ). Both authors are interested in deconstructing the ideology of power naturalized by Western culture, by using a number of postmodernist techniques and strategies, such as intertextuality, metafiction and parody. These literary devices become an ideological instrument for laying bare the manipulative function of language through the juxtaposition of different discourses and generic conventions, traditionally separated in the domains of culture. In this sense the first chapter is devoted to the study of the Bildungsroman and its recreation in the conventional structures of Gothic fiction, science fiction, and fairy tales. The second chapter is concerned with the analysis of the allegorical journey as the organizing element of the plot, which is enriched by the juxtaposition of psychoanalytical discourses on female identity, and of the Romantic and Surrealistic manifestos about art. The result is the construction of some metafictional intertexts that radically decompose these theoretical systems and reveal their patriarchal bias. In the third chapter the study turns towards the specific way in which Carter and Ducornet revisit history in order to build up a critique of the process and method of its writing. In the novels analysed in this final chapter, they point to a significant dissolution of the barriers separating fiction and reality, through which it is possible to recreate the past through the marginal voices silenced in its construction. While chapter 1 and chapter 2 stress the similarities present in some of Carter's and Ducornet's novels, it is in chapter 3 where the differences between both careers appear, because of the different ideologies inspiring them: whereas Angela Carter never departs from materialism as the only way to approach human (and female) nature, Ducornet tends rather to a utopianism which links the human with the natural world, ascribing herself to a particular development of the ecofeminist ethics. |
