A Change is in the Wind: Baroque Stylistics in Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus

Abstract

The death of postmodern author Angela Carter in 1992 coincided with the beginning of the Digital Age around 1990. Technological developments of the personal computer and the internet allow the public to actively engage with text and print, which marks the difference between the digital era and the postmodern period. While Carter did not foresee the possibilities which new technologies offer, the promise of these technologies and in particular the ability to copy and paste a text appear to be anticipated in her novels as she systematically revives works of other artists. While her work has been thoroughly examined within a feminist and a postmodern framework, far too little attention has been given to the relation between Carter’s Baroque quality and that of the digital age. This thesis attempts to show how Carter’s later work anticipates a transition from postmodernism towards the new digital Baroque age. In order to illustrate this, it examines Nights at the Circus and her personal essays, Notes from the Frontline, and Fools are my Theme. It studies the Baroque sense of movement in Carter’s work and the Baroque notion of copying, which allows for progress away from the original to occur, thus rendering the artist or creator of the original, less relevant. With this, artists are derived from her elevated state. Instead, Carter considered texts becoming products for and by the people in wake of the digital age.