ABSTRACT
In focusing on fantasy and the erotic, this chapter explores a connection often evaded by critics of fantasy. Opening by differentiating between realist sexual imaginings and erotic fantasy, it discusses some of the ways in which Victorian poets and illustrators smuggled adult sexual content into or underneath the veneer of children’s fairy or nursery tales, including Richard Doyle’s illustrations for children and Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘Goblin Market’. Moving forward to the twentieth century, we explore the relationship between death and sexual fantasy in Patrick McGrath’s short story ‘The E(rot)ic Potato’ and J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash. Exploring both in the context of Steven Marcus’s coinage the ‘pornotopia’, the chapter asks whether extreme sexual perversity can ever be ethical, utilizing Angela Carter’s concept of the ‘moral pornographer’. Traditionally, those critics who evaluate the erotic in literature and art presume a masculine point of view. This chapter refutes this patriarchal approach, woman-centred erotic fantasy taking up the entire second half, initially through a detailed discussion of Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands, Monique Wittig’s The Lesbian Body and Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, before concluding with a section on carnivorous sexual fantasy, based around Marian Engel’s novel, Bear.
