In Defence of Angela Carter
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- Опубліковано 9 лис 2023
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Angela Carter admitted in an interview that she writes 'overblown, purple, self-indulgent prose'. Purple prose is often considered 'bad', over-the-top writing. Does Carter care? Absolutely f***ing not! Her writing is a celebration of purple prose, and we're here for it. Watch this video to find out more about Carter's truly decadent, delicious, dark, and dangerous fairytales collected in her seminal publication, 'The Bloody Chamber'.
Written, presented, and edited by Rosie Whitcombe
@books_ncats
Directed, produced, and edited by Matty Phillips
@ma_ps_
mphotos.uk
I like 'purple prose', vivid descriptions and poetic writing. There are millions of words...if writers aren't using them, who is?
Word 💜
Chat GPT in purple word vomit
That clip is so healing. A lecturer called my writing purple, and laughed in my face when I turned in a surrealist folktale I was really proud of. Her words discouraged me from pursuing a career in writing though I graduated at the top of my class.
As someone who likes a lot of descriptives in the books I read or listen to I hope you consider returning to it.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. Never let green eyed monsters try to kill your dreams. Write something today 🖐️🌞
Wow. Sounds like she was jealous, doesn’t it? I mean, a teacher taking the time and energy to run someone down like that?
Thank you nice people. ❤️
Aaaaw, it's never too late!
"It's rottagecore, if you will." New favorite channel, right here.
Me too!
I was about to be like "Why doesn't this have more likes and comments, how DARE the masses do this???" And then I remembered it's only been out for an hour😅
Haha aww thank you! - Rosie
Point still stands three months later
Sadly, people don’t read much anymore it seems.
“What is the purpose of purple prose?” Is my doctorate thesis’s title.
Is this a joke? Because I'd 100% read this!
OMG I LOVE THAT YOU WORE RED WHITE AND BLACK AND HAD THE WHITE AND RED CANDLES!!!!!!!! Omg brilliant and subtle! Love it!!
I think purple prose is a wonderful way of witting, but it's definitely a double edged sword. When done well, it's so wonderful to read and the words flow through your head like butter, but when done poorly, it's just annoying 😂
I mean, I feel the same way about non-purple prose. When it's done well, it's snappy and precise. When done badly, it's mind-numbingly boring and without color or time to savor anything.
I think, perhaps, either style loses its meaning when it's oversaturated, or purposeless; when the writer can't distinguish between foppish, or garish language which conveys little meaning, and language that's bogged-down in unnecessary details, which serve only to fill a page, instead of furthering the plot. "Setting the scene," can mean a flowery display of adjectives, and long-sentences, but what if the narrator is meant to be an oblivious curmudgeon? Purple prose might actually deter from the personality, and atmosphere.
Really, it begs the question: Is purple-prose a description of a writing style, or a short-hand slang for a writer who hasn't yet found a proper balance to draw a reader in, and keep them reading? A follow-up question may be: Does it serve the author, or the reader, to confer this writing style? In other words, does the author write for themselves, or for an audience? Personal preference is all well-and-good, unless you want, or need, others to participate.
I LOVE Angela Carter - she's so incredible, her work is delightfully dark and challenging and unapologetic. She's a treasure.
I love her too, she’s the best ✨ - Rosie
Angela Carter, to Shirley Jackson.
Nouveau to Deco.
Old world to New world.
These two fabulous writers were almost opposites in their styles, but were oddly similar in their relationship to their overbearing Mothers!
Sometimes the only way to fight is with a pen because you wouldn't get away with a sword.
The difference is that Shirley put poison on hers.
Thanks so much for this presentation.
My Favourite of A.C's is "Heroes and Villains", but it's hard to separate from "The Magic Toy Shop"; so blatantly ripped-off, and sanitised by * Lemony Snickert*.
I really enjoy your thoughts on this.
👍🏽🙋🇦🇺
Thank you for this, glad you enjoyed watching ☺️ - Rosie
I adore Angela Carter’s purple prose! The Bloody Chamber lives in my purse, so if I’m ever unexpectedly stuck somewhere waiting, I can bring it out. Her beautifully evocative writing has inspired a lot of the fine art photographs I create. I’m so glad to have found your channel and I look forward to seeing more from you! 💜
Oh wow, do you have a website that showcases any of your photographs? Thanks for watching - Rosie
Maybe people thinking purple prose is bad writing is what's kept me from reading for so long! I always loved poetic descriptions like this, and so many books people recommended to me were just so boring. Like, the text had no personality. THESE passages would keep me interested. Thank you for introducing me to this writer!
'The Bloody Chamber' is bloody BRILLIANT! ;)
When the countess says "it bites" im tempted to take a more literal interpretation of what actually happens, but a metaphorical one in the meaning. Maybe she meant the thorns of the rose were "biting" her. Im inclined to believe that its either a commentary similar to "its always greener on the other side of the fense", or perhaps it means shes no longer content with her life after the incident. The rose she once held without any doubt in her husband, now bites. Shes forever unhappy and nervous. A victim.
I love the Bloody Chamber stories not only for its prose, but I loved to see someone lean into the dark and gothic and frankly disturbing parts of fairy tales. I am always amazed when I learn there are people who have't grown up with the Grimm Brother collections. They are fairly violent, but they were actually edited to become palpable to children. The earlier editions of their collections are even more violent.
I'm so glad to have happened upon this channel, thank you SO MUCH for making these videos for us all.
Regarding The Werewolf, I too wondered if the girl had seized an opportunity to take her grandmother's place in the woods. & I wondered if unknowingly, she would be changed by that house or woods into a werewolf like her grandmother. The girl already had the instincts of a hunter, & was at home in nature. I don't know if Carter intended it but I always felt there was a hint that the girl was caught in a familial cycle. That the grandmother's affliction wasn't due to a traditional infection method, like the bite of another werewolf, but from living in the forest itself.
Revisited The Bloody Chamber on the Autumn Equinox. I'm not sure why, but I associate that sort of prose with early autumn (despite many of her stories taking place in colder weather.) So far, this is the only collection of hers that I have read (twice). My favorite was "The Werewolf" followed by "The Tiger's Bride." One of the things that I noticed about her fiction is the way she plays with setting. Many times her stories that appear to take place in "Once Upon A Time" will suddenly have modern (for the time) technology. Are her other collections straight fiction or are they horror as well?
Honestly I’m not sure! I’ve read The Bloody Chamber and Wise Children but haven’t read other short stories by Carter yet - Rosie
I just discovered Angela Carter and her writing blows me away!
I adore your enthusiastic interpretations. Thank you.
Thank you! - Rosie
This was marvellous! Thank you for this rich analysis, I can't wait for more insightful videos.
Thank you so much 😊 - Rosie
Love your channel and your opinions!!! I am a dyed in the wool Angela Carter fan. She was and still is extraordinary!!! I, like you, want to be engulfed in the redolent Gothic Forest of Erl Kings and Werewolves!!! I love 'purple prose's... I read the Gormemghast trilogy at 12 and all these years later, I still look for authors unafraid to drench you in their Gothic waters. Your Shirley Jackson and Ann Radcliffe was spot on, as well!!! If you haven't yet, please consider doing a review of Diane Setterfield? She is a stunning talent and I would love to hear more of your takes on her work!!! Congratulations on the lovely new channel!!! ❤❤❤
Thanks so very much 🥰 I’ll check Diane Setterfield out, what kind of stuff does she write?? - Rosie
She writes in the Gothic style....particularly in the Thirteenth Tale. They are usually stories about strange goings on in families and communities. That is the most I can say without giving too much away...but if you love Angela Carter, I think you will love how descriptive and sweepingly mysterious the language and stories are to read! Hope this is a good recommendation for you!!!🌟🌟🌟
I'm only just starting to discover Carter, through an omnibus of her short stories I found. Her dense, sensuous style is intoxicating!
I've just discovered your content, and I am enraptured! The vibes of your videos are immaculate and you have such a great talent for enthusiastic literary discussion!
Thanks so much ☺️ - Rosie
I found The Bloody Chamber unforgettable. Maybe her novels are different, but I didn't find TBC purple, I found it heightened to the pitch that just worked. Vividly ambitious, dark, sensual, dark and dark and dark again. Sumptuous, decadent and stylistically brilliant
I adore the screenplay treatment Carter wrote about the Christchurch murders, the 2 girl friends, that was later made into a film, tho written by someone else. Published on BBC website and not available last I checked. "The Christchurch Murder" 1988. Actress Fiona Shaw as Angela Carter/Narrator Oh! So great. I wish BBC would make it available again.
Your channel is totally inspiring.
your series on gothic literature is invaluable for anyone studying ocr A level English Literature - it’s also incredibly well made and engaging! thank you!!
Thanks very much 🥰 - Rosie
I absolutely adore Angela Carter; she helped me through tough times and was an excellent teacher of writing; a writer who taught me that it was all right to be as weird and as wonderful, as wild and as in-your-face as possible, and to not care when I am writing. The Bloody Chamber blew my mind hen I first read it and I have never looked back. It is a masterpiece and my favourite collection of stories of all time.
In terms of "The Snow Child", after I read the actual typescript of the story, Carter had written the words: "Abstraction of Desire, No Love". So I thought that the rose and the bite was that desire which comes back to bite us, the truth that she is not wanted but that she is lusted after, and that she has to compete with other women or girls for the attentions of her husband. But that is entirely subjective.
I love the stories of The Bloody Chamber, and I think that the book deserves more attention and, indeed, more adaptations than there is, with only "The Company of Wolves" being the only filmed story from the books. Her writing is sumptuous and brings to life that abstract, slightly-off-tilt world, through the looking glass. It is an eclectic collection of references that work perfectly in their favour, and the language, her "overblown, purple, self-indulgent prose" works so well for it, like shilling shockers from the 19th and early 20th Centuries, playing with conventions we all know so well and shocking us with them. Thank you for this wonderful video!
Thanks for introducing me to Angela Carter. As a lover of the Brontes and gothic literature, I had never read her. Your video made me excited to read her work!
She's sublime, simply sublime..... chef's kiss as the kids say today...
I love that quote so much! 😭 That's it exactly! If it's pure and from the heart, then there's no pretense to be pretentiousness. Especially in a world where AI will be doing the writing for so many "BIG" (iow corporate lol) things, the only thing it can't replicate is you
More werewolf please. Also the Scarlet House.
I love how you sit stone-still at the close while Mouse (tom or queen?) carries on with the bean preen
Lovely analysis! It very much reminds me that Tanith Lee also did her own interpretation of Grimm's fairy tales that's probably not as well known as Carter. It's also a little bit pulp (including werewolf grandma) but also beautiful and hits a bit in that surrealist fantasy sweet spot. If you haven't read it, I suggest it!
I have and always will adore god purple prose. One of my favorite books is Clan of The Cave Bear and the gothic esque purple prose is what sold the book for me. For example:
-The white liquid from Iza’s bowl that had heightened the perceptions and opened the minds of the magicians to The Mog-ur, had allowed his special ability to create a symbiosis with Ayla’s mind as well. The traumatic birth that damaged the brain of the disfigured man had impaired only a portion of his physical abilities, not the sensitive psychic overdevelopment that enabled his great power.
But the crippled man was the ultimate end-product of his kind. Only in him had nature taken the course set for the Clan to its fullest extreme. There could be no further development without radical change, and their characteristics were no longer adaptable. Like the huge creature they venerated, and many others that shared their environment, they were incapable of surviving radical change. The race of men with social conscience enough to care for their weak and wounded, with spiritual awareness enough to bury their dead and venerate their great totem, the race of men with great brains but no frontal lobes, who made no great strides forward, who made almost no progress in nearly a hundred thousand years, was doomed to go the way of the woolly mammoth and the great cave bear. They didn’t know it, but their days on earth were numbered, they were doomed to extinction. In Creb, they had reached the end of their line.
Ayla felt a sensation akin to the deep pulsing of a foreign bloodstream superimposed on her own. The powerful mind of the great magician was exploring her alien convolutions, trying to find a way to mesh. The fit was imperfect, but he found channels of similarity, and where none existed, he groped for alternatives and made connections where there were only tendencies. With startling clarity, she suddenly comprehended that it was he who had brought her out of the void; but more, he was keeping the other mog-urs, also linked with him, from knowing she was there. She could just barely sense his connection with them, but she could not sense them at all. They, too, knew he had made a connection with someone-or something-else, but never dreamed it was Ayla.”
I often had teachers tell me my writing was flowery, there was this attitude that though technically it wasn't bad, I would manage to make some male teachers look at my essays with a bit of disgust, I would ask them to explain what they meant but they all seemed to have a hard time telling me what was exactly wrong with my style....I never came across the term writing purple but after this, I think I get it now...watching this I feel better about my writing style :)
That's really interesting, and I'm glad learning about purple prose makes you feel better about your writing style. My creative writing is v purple, and while that's not to everyone's taste it's what I love to read and write, so I've accepted it haha - Rosie
As the author of the worst werewolf novel ever written- I desperately want more from you and your favorite authors on this subject
Thank you SO much for this introduction to this author! How had I never heard of Angela Carter? I plan on slurping down every steaming purple word until my own pages drip violet too!
Wow, I somehow forgot I'd read these stories until I came across this video, and I'm so happy to be reminded. Now I remember how thoroughly impressed I was by the use of motif throughout, and that a short story was capable of using colour to such effect. I can picture the passages you've read aloud here so vividly in my mind's eye that you could've easily tricked me into thinking that I'd actually seen a short film once upon a time.
It's not often that Angela Carter and the ever-elusive Paul West are mentioned back to back. If you like purple prose, you should also read West's novels, especially from "Bela Lugosi's White Christmas" onwards; that's when his style empurpled noticeably. West was English too and a contemporary of Carter, but he moved to the USA in the 1960s or so I believe and became a teacher. He ended up marrying a former student, the poet and nonfiction writer Diane Ackerman, another purplish stylish.
Cool, thanks for the recommendations! - Rosie
I guess it comes down to whether or not the purple makes sense for the story in question, and so much of that is still a matter of taste.
I will be watching all of your videos. Thank you so much for creating these!
Love your videos, keep it up ❤
Loved these videos, keep at it! You're doing great
Waut wait wait wait wait . .so the comments that i post hither and yon, from high to low...spilling my ire, enumerating my joy, waxing quizucally upon those things that send me into rhe seas of deep confusion and morose melencoly.... They "suck"?
Great work!
Love this video! Its given me a greater appreciation and understanding of the collection 😄
Love Mouse making a cameo right at the end. Reminds me of my calico Honey, totally unbothered. 😂
My favorite author is Nicholson Baker. I don't find his prose purple in any possible derogatory sense of the word, but if we describe purple prose as that which is self-indulgent, long-winded, filled with adjectives and adverbs, poetic devices, and drawing attention to its own writing style, then his prose fits the bill (with magnificent writing skill and mastery over the language). This is my absolute favorite passage, from _Room Temperature_ :
>> But my mother’s informal punctuation in the op-ed letter came as a complete surprise; and the fact that my immediate instinctive response to it was to point out the misplaced commas so harshly that she wept (the only time, as far as I remember, that I ever hurt her feelings - for she understood and was even amused by my teenage request that whenever the two of us walked down the street together, she would please walk at least three yards ahead of me, so that people wouldn’t know we were related; and she even played along in her compliance, whistling, walking with a theatrical solitariness, checking her pocketbook, pausing abruptly to glance at a window display), as if these faulty commas called into question our standing as a family - the fact that I had been instinctively so cruel, made me double up with misery when, after I was married, I came across some sentences in Boswell that were punctuated just as hers had been. Boswell (and De Quincey, Edward Young, and others) had treated the sunken garden of a parenthetical phrase just as my mother had - as something to be prepared for and followed by the transitional rounding and softening of a comma. And such hybrids - of comma and parenthesis, or of semicolon and parenthesis, too - might at least in some cases allow for finer calibrations between phrases, subtler subordinations, irregular varieties of exuberance and magisteriality and fragile conjunction. In our desire for provincial correctness and holy-sounding simplicity and the rapid teachability of intern copy editors we had illegalized all variant forms - and, as with the loss of subvarieties of corn or apples, this homogenization of product was accomplished at a major unforeseen cost: our stiff-jointed prose was less able, so I now huffily thought, full of vengeance against the wrong I had done my mother, to adapt itself to those very novelties of social and technological life whose careful interpretation and weighting was the principal reason for the continued indispensability of the longer sentence.
One of the things I find remarkable about his writing is that he's liberally using so many poetic devices with rhythm, alliteration, assonance, consonance, euphony, and even the occasional rhyme, along with similes and metaphors, allusions, and so forth. Yet it's so discreetly woven into the prose that -- unless we're consciously looking for it -- it's difficult to even notice that it's so abundantly there.
His prose also reads like his narrators have ADHD, delving into what appear like tangential thoughts left and right. Yet his sentences and paragraphs are carefully structured to form a clean hierarchy of connected ideas rather than a messy graph, so it's surprisingly lucid despite tackling so many seemingly-unrelated ideas at once. It's the most organized writing masquerading as disorganized, the most poetic masquerading as plain, the most concise communication of ideas masquerading as long-winded.
Love...love...love..so very lovely.
Hi, I recently found your channel and just want to say that both you and your videos are absolutely enthralling. Thank you.
Thanks very much! :) - Rosie
I don't know what people are complaining about I think the pros set the mood for the story
Could you do a video about Rebecca and du Maurier?
I had never heard of Angela Carter - that I can recall - before seeing this. I love Ann Radcliffe, so I will check out Carter’s works. I’m so pleased to have discovered your channel. It’s a gem. 😊
Thank you! Hope you enjoy Carter. What’s your favourite Radcliffe text? - Rosie
@@books_ncats I love Udolpho. It’s the one I return to the most. It is exciting and suspenseful. I thoroughly enjoy it.
Love this so much, thank you!!!
Aww yay, you're welcome! :) - Rosie
Hahaha I knew there was another reason she was one of my favorite writers, and the absolute not giving a F of that sound bite confirmed it.
thank you *SO* much. 💜
You’re very welcome 💖 - Rosie
Oh, that I may one day have the gumption to dismiss my critics with a blithe, "So fucking what?"
Also.... Rottagecore sent me. Amazing.
Right? What unabashed gumption - Rosie
Ah, I was waiting for that musical cue. (The Erl-King, naturally.)
Okay, "rottagecore" made me laugh out loud! :D Also I now need to look up if my local library has anything by Angela Carter.
I just watched the movie version of The Company of Wolves from this book. Now I know why I suddenly got suggested your videos. I will say that one reason I love a good properly descriptive story is I have what I've recently learned is called Aphantasia. I've always said my brain tries to make up for it by writing a big chunk of text to describe it. So if the author's going to lend a hand, well I'm not going to turn it down. Doesn't prevent the occasional attack of ADD, but it lets me get into the language easier which is what I seek for in books. Why else would one deliberately read a Faulkner sentence if not for love.
Ah, interesting, am I right in thinking that's a condition whereby you struggle to imagine things unless they're right in front of you? - Rosie
@@books_ncats Yes, unless I know already what the thing looks like and or it's in front of me, I can't imagine it at all. If I know the details I can think out the description. It's weird because I'm an artist and should be able to picture things in my head.
The Good Child reminds me of The Grimm Conclusion which I read when I was a kid. I forgot who wrote it. But it’s the third in a trilogy based on Grimm stories and there’s a part where we find out that the main character’s father is the dragon terrorizing the village because of the injuries they find on him after battling the dragon.
Your videos are awesome, thanks! I will take Radcliffe and Jackson any day over Carter, although I can appreciate where she’s coming from … even while I don’t care to read her. 😅
From the passage you read from Werewolves I feel the little know her grandma was the werewolf the whole time and used this moment as an opportunity to
You would love the gorgeous film Nosferatu by Werner Herzog. Know it?
Purple prose, by definition needs to be inept? Carter however, is a master.
I came to this video directly from a review of a terrible contemporary fantasy story with prose I would consider very purple. I think the prose selected here illustrates why the "purpleness" of purple prose is not the problem, it's bad writing.
The bad prose in the book reviewed in the other video involved a lot of tortured and confusing metaphors and often left me less sure of what I was meant to be picturing than when the description started, whereas the prose highlighted here is beautiful and paints a vivid mental image.
Like most things in writing, the sparseness or richness of the prose is a tool and some will use it well and others ... will not.
The Evil Queen is not Snow White's mother, the king remarried.
Would love to hear more about her werewolves if you havnt done it yet!!
Rottagecore 🤣🤣🤣
Yesssss 🍄🍂
Have you done a video on Carter’s vampire tale?
A mixture of camp and kitsch ❤
So f***ing what 😂😂😂❤️❤️❤️
Well, crap. I'm buyin' the book based on your say-so.
I liked the stories you presented to us . …. And , on the other hand I was not that impressed by them. In Europe we learned about the Grimm and Anderson collection of fairytales in school . First you hear the soft version of them but as you grow older you are presented with the raw versions and dive deeper into them. Even the Grimm and Anderson versions are a bit cleaned up . Fairytales are oozing with cruelty, death, torture etc . Fairy folk are not nice or kind. They are alien and dangerous. Having read the original versions of fairytales the stories you present are quite soft and not that original.
That being said , I love the rich use of the English language, the lechery, the voluptuousness of the writing style . Sorry , English not being my mother tongue it is sometimes difficult to explain my viewpoint.
So I like them and on the other hand it feels like they have been told like this before ❤
@ilselauwers6009
I think you have explained it perfectly well.
It's a shame that we are fed so much Disney, sanitised, milk-sop.
Keep the faerie tales for grownups.
Like the song of Lord Lankin.
I understand what you mean, and thanks for sharing your viewpoint 😊 - Rosie
"Ok, I write overblown, purple, self-indulgent prose. So f***ing what?"
"Well, I was merely hoping you'd be more "purple" with your response."
Then his boots leapt off the interviewer's feet and on to the writer's legs. Now the interviewer was bare as a bone and the writer furred and booted.
God forbid we should perplex a stupid reader looking for an easily consumed and defecated idea.
But such is the nature of a market-driven, genre obsessed industry, which it all is nowadays.
Editors are to blame for much here -- lazy, timid, trained to spot the "good read" -- whatever the f//k that is supposed to be.
The writer, faithful reader, owes you nothing.
I find Angela Carter's twisted fairy tales hugely overrated. Read the original stories, not the Disney schlock, and gain real insight to the darkness of the human psyche.
wake up babes a new aesthetic just dropped: rottagecore