환상의 물질성과 역사적 상상력 :메타 가족사로서의 안젤라 카터의『현명한 아이들

Abstract

This study pursues the material and the historical embedded in the literary fantasy of Angela Carter’s Wise Children. Despite its magic realism and a narrative which does not follow chronological order, Wise Children can be defined as a meta family history in which the imperial politics and patriarchal culture of Great Britain are exposed through the figure of a marginal woman who seeks her place and significance in the present of the twentieth century in relation to the past of her family history. The heroine deploys her farcical and fantastic imagination to narrate the genealogy of three generations from the middle of the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. This article contends that fantasy can serve as a meta-narrative for a new historical imagination and material reality. In Carter’s novel, fantasy functions as a space for the “historical uncanny,” which is at once a postmodern conception of history as well as the crucial gap in sublime History. Despite its subversive potential, however, Angela Carter’s fantasy is always balanced by a sense of reality and tradition. Fantasy evokes laughter and a spirit of festivity that counters stark reality, but despite its potential for altering reality never completely subverts it.