Speaker
Description
Angela Carter is one of Britain’s best known and most studied authors of the twentieth century. Whenever her work is associated with children’s literature, her collection The Bloody Chamber is mentioned – a set of daring rewritings of fairy tales aimed at adult readers. Few scholars mention that Carter also authored several children’s books herself. In this lecture, Vanessa Joosen approaches Carter’s work through the lens of “crosstextuality,” a term coined by Sara Pankenier Weld to describe intertextual links that connect children’s literature and adult works across oeuvres of authors who write for both audiences. While Carter kept a life-long interest in the books that she had loved as a child, she approached childhood quite differently when addressing young readers themselves, especially when late in life, she had a son of her own.