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In her 1936 novel Nightwood, Djuna Barnes creates a darkly disjointed narrative about a bunch of misfit performers and outsider skulkers on the cafe-culture streets of 1920s Paris. Her work is influenced by Hoffmann, Rabelais, the circus - there's a strong sense of Bosch and it's boldness still smoulders today. Barnes (later an influence on Burroughs) wrote with a fervour and intensity comparable possibly to Miller or Poe, and the elements of the grotesque are rich.
What I want to know is - given the connection between the grotesque and female corporeality (Mikhail Bakhtin's declaration of the epitome of the grotesque body as the 'pregnant, senile hag' comes to mind), which other women use the tradition in their work, and how?
Obvious candidates are of course Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates - but who else?
What has happened to the grotesque in literature, and how are women using it? |
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