Imagining of Literature

Angela Carter – Heroes and Villains “If the Barbarians are destroyed, who will we then be able to blame for the bad things?”  Angela Carter was born in 1940 and she joked with her mother who insisted that she had learnt for her pregnancy in the very day The Second World War was declared. Angela Carter won several literary awards, The Somerset Maugham Award being one of them. She is often described as a neo-Gothic author and a feminist. Before her death caused by cancer, Carter was working on a sequel of “Jane Eyre”, which draws an interesting literary kinship between her and Jean Rhys, alongside the one with Charlotte Bronte. The 20th century British writer can be described by the help of many adjectives, but despite the number they still will not be enough. Not only is she a prolific writer but also a journalist, author of several screenplays (some – adaptations of her short stories to the big screen). She studied English literature at University of Bristol. Her fluency ...

It won’t be me if I start this list with no female name on it. So without further ado here she is, the devil in a skirt, the most seductive and yet the most vicious god creature – Kate from “East of Eden”. Let’s put aside the infernal features Steinbeck is particularly searching. Kate is the perfect villain because she feels no remorse, no love and in a matter of fact no real hatred. She is amputated from everything that can be called human weakness – she does not feel regret does not fully realize what bonds are – blood relations or other – she knows not their real meaning, she is not even keen on her own children. But she does have an Achilles’ heel, however, and that is the fact that she is self-centered, egocentric person with maniac obsessions. It is not a surprise that one of the most popular teen books/tv series “Vampire diaries” is equipped with a similar villain Katherina – the evil Bulgarian vampire, who is in many ways literally like Steinbeck’s character. Book villain №...