This volume examines a wide variety of the ways in which the fantastic has impacted upon contemporary women's fiction. Some of the issues addressed include: the importance of the cyborg and the spectre to critical and fictional discourses of gender; the interface between the grotesque and contemporary readings of feminist utopianism; the growing similarity between late twentieth-century gothicism and the magical real. The study is based upon the work of fifteen writers and includes novels by Allende, Atwood, Carter, Head, Morrison, Weldon, Winterson and Wittig.

Autorentext

LUCIE ARMITT is Lecturer in English at the University of Wales, Bangor. Her previous publications include Theorising the Fantastic and Where No Man Has Gone Before: Women and Science Fiction. Her main areas of research interest at present include the nineteenth and twentieth-century ghost story, contemporary magic realism, and, most recently, George Eliot.

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Acknowledgements Introduction The Grotesque Utopia: Joanna Russ, Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter, Jane Palmer and Monique Wittig Chronotopes and Cyborgs: Octavia Butler, Joanna Russ, Fay Weldon and Marge Piercy Vampires and the Unconscious: Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Bessie Head Ghosts and (Narrative) Ghosting: Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson and Toni Morrison Fairies and Feminism: Alice Thomas Ellis, Fay Weldon and Elizabeth Baines Magic Realism Meets the Contemporary Gothic: Isabel Allende and Angela Carter Mannequins in the Marketplace: Angela Carter, Pat Barker and Margaret Atwood Conclusion: The Lost Mother Bibliography Index