Prologue. Seeking the slant -- 1. Early encounters: The bitch route 13 -- The crushed butterflies of war -- My day -- Jessica Mitford -- Bob Treuhaft -- The female form defined -- Mrs Thatcher -- Making it big in the New World -- Angela Carter -- 2. Words and symbols: Saint Paul : Let women keep silent -- Christine de Pizan : The book of the city of ladies -- Watch your tongues -- Obscenity -- Fighting talk -- Saint Cunera's scarf -- Language, power, fear -- The sign of the dollar -- 3. Bodies and minds: Harmoniously arranged livers -- Magic zones -- The virtue of incest -- The Marquise unmasked : Les liaisons dangereuses -- 'Wild at heart' : Manon Lescaut -- In the mirror of madness : Elaine Showalter -- Fasting girls -- Bloated -- Body politic : Madonna -- Sites of desire -- Love's work : Gillian Rose -- Is there another place from which the dickhead's self can speak? -- 4. Faiths and marvels: Wrestling with the oldest rules : the first commandment -- Signs of the times : touching tears -- Omens of millennium -- Suffering souls -- The greatest saint after Sainte Marie -- The triumph of the moon -- Dom Sylvester Houďard -- Showers of toads -- Amber -- Poison -

5. Shakespearean transformations: Rough magic and sweet lullaby -- Shakespeare and the goddess -- Maps of elsewhere -- Shakespeare's Caliban -- The silence of Sycorax -- Its own dark Styx : Caryl Phillips -- Castaway on the ocean of story -- 6. Creole: Between the colonist and the Creole -- Noonday devils -- Siren/Hyphen, or 'The maid beguiled' --Cannibals and kings : King Kong -- Bananas -- Zombie : the devil inside -- 7. Fairies, myths and magic: Aesop -- Roberto Calasso -- Louis XIV -- La Fontaine -- Under the executioner's sword -- Laughter and hope in the old wives' tale -- Mother Russia -- 8. Reworking the tale: Combat myths -- Donkey business, donkey work -- Crossed desires -- 'Large as life, and twice as natural' : Lewis Carroll -- Struwwelpeter -- Revelling in hope -- Cunning and high spirits -- The inexpressible closeness of the deer -- Hoopoe : Ted Hughes -- Myth and faerie : rewritings and recoveries -- Coda. Who's sorry now? (2002)

Previously published: London : Chatto & Windus, 2003.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [481]-499) and index.

Imported from: 130.102.42.45:210/INNOPAC (Do not remove)