バーセルミの処女雪の探求 : Snow Whiteと1960年代アメリカ文化

概要

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Donald Barthelme's Snow White (1967), a metaphysical parody of the famous fairy tale "Snow White," has been often discussed as a representative of the postmodern fiction of the 1960s. Although a number of studies have interpreted on this novel with particular attention to its literary devices in the text, very few have centered on why Barthelme purposely selected "Snow White" from among numerous fairy tales for the groundwork of his narrative. From a cultural point of view, we can note that the family-like urban community, where an adult heroine Snow White and her seven lovers cohabit, mimics young hippies' communes of the mid 60s. Therefore, it may be justifiable to assume that the characters' flight from the original fairy tale setting is rather similar to the counter-cultural rebellion by the young against the existent patriarchal authority. In this paper, I would like to propose a hypothesis that the controversial "revirginization of Snow White" at the end of the novel is a postmodernist challenge to a mountain of traditional literary works. With a close analysis of both cultural and counter-cultural representation that this novel reveals, I shall examine how effective the "Snow White" motif is in Barthelme's highly deconstructive fiction.
2007-03-31