On Carnivalized Features In The Passion Of New Eve

Angela Carter is a very famous feminist writer in contemporary British history.In her comparatively short creating career,she left us with a great number of legacies.Among all her literary creations,the most famous and controversial one is The Passion of New Eve.The novel vividly shows us the grotesque adventure of Evelyn and his passion of changing from a male Evelyn to female Eve.To express her feminist views,Carter deliberately established carnivalized worlds,which practices M.M.Bakhtin's carnival theory.In The Passion of New Eve,carnivalized features run through the novel.Therefore,the author tries to analyze carnivalized features in this novel by using Bakhtin's carnival theory so as to explore Carter's feminist views.This thesis is composed of six parts.The introduction part presents the profile of Angela Carter and her novel The Passion of New Eve,the literature review of her literary creations as well as the significance of this thesis.Chapter one probes into M.M.Bakhtin's carnival theory,which naturally leads to the concept of carnivalized features and then summarizes the important features of carnivalized literature.Chapter two studies Bahktin's carnival duality reflected in The Passion of New Eve from three perspectives: carnival duality of death and rebirth,carnival duality of crowning and decrowning,and carnival duality of obedience and subversion.Chapter three focuses on the three canivalized worlds in The Passion of New Eve and the feminist views Carter holds.Chapter four is the main body of this thesis,which conducts a retrospective study on Carter's canivalized ways of expression.First and foremost,Carter's pervasive use of obscene description and abuse words provides the characters with carnivalized atmosphere so that they can tear their masks and mock the official rules.Then the subversive parody of biblical female images is explored.The names of the characters are a reminiscence of biblical names such as Leilah and new Eve which naturally remind us of Delilah and Eve respectively.The last part summarizes the whole thesis and naturally comes to a conclusion.