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“The hair is black as ebony…”. The Function of the Märchen in Donald Barthelme's Snow White
Author(s) -
Horn Katalin
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.1982.tb01062.x
Subject(s) - impossibility , white (mutation) , snow , soul , happiness , personality , inversion (geology) , literature , philosophy , art , psychology , theology , psychoanalysis , physics , social psychology , geology , meteorology , chemistry , paleontology , biochemistry , structural basin , political science , law , gene
Summary The novel Snow White by Donald Barthelme is a modernized and trivialized reversal of the original fairy‐tale. By the total inversion of the text, Barthelme questions the very message of the Märchen itself: he maintains ‐ in contrast to the Märchen ‐ the general impossibility of happiness and of the successful development of personality. The Märchen appears in Barthelme's book in two layers: as its absolutely modified story and in the form of quotations from the original text. These quotations concern Snow White's body and soul and underline Barthelme's psychological message of human frustration.