Postmodern Features in Donald Barthelme’s Snow White 浅析唐纳德•巴塞尔姆《白雪公主》中的后现代特征文献综述
2020-06-25 20:50:20
1. Introduction As the prominent writer in the American literary history of the 20th century and the pioneer of American postmodern fictions, Donald Barthelme(1931#8211;1989) uses different writing skills which had never appeared before to expose the social situation and problems. Barthelme's thoughts and works were largely the result of 20th-century angst as he read extensively, for example in Pascal, Husserl, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Ionesco, Beckett, Sartre, and Camus. He breaks through the traditional durance in thought, liberates American fiction, and brings a revolution in American literature. Barthelme's stories typically avoid traditional plot structures, relying instead on a steady accumulation of seemingly unrelated details. The great bulk of his work was published in The New Yorker. In 1964, he began to publish short stories collections beginning with Come Back, Dr. Caligari in 1964, followed by Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (1968) and City Life (1970). Based on the fairy tale Snow White, Barthelme changed the background and characteristics of the roles. Snow White became a woman living in the city, tired of staying with the dwarfs all the time and dying for a prince who could take her away from the boring life. However, the prince was just a loafer. The reality is so cruel. Barthelme creates a hopelessly fragmented verbal collage to show all the things. This essay will discuss postmodern features in Donald Barthelme#8217;s Snow White. 2. Need for the study As for the need of study, on the one hand, readers can have a thorough understanding of the background and social problems of that time. The new writing skills are the reflection of the specific culture of the times, which is a great help to the research of the postmodern literature. Second, most critical essays lack systematic research into the novel and this paper will interpret its postmodern features in detail, from which readers can benefit and for which they have a straightforward reference. 3.Literature review This thesis will discuss postmodernism and the postmodern features in Donald Barthelme#8217;s Snow White. 3.1 Postmodernism Postmodernism in literature is usually associated with (among others) Acker, Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Bartheleme, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino and John Ashberry, whose literary strategies widely differ, but each of whom shows a self-reflexive interest in the processes of narration itself. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, tends to resist definition or classification as a "movement". Indeed, the convergence of postmodern literature with various modes of critical theory, particularly reader-response and deconstructionist approaches, and the subversions of the implicit contract between the author, text and readers by which its works are often characterized, have led to pre-modern fictions such as Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605, 1615) and Laurence Sterne's eighteenth-century satire Tristram Shandy retrospectively considered by some as early examples of postmodern literature. The thesis will refer to three main postmodern features: parody, collage, fragment. The parody in western postmodern novels mainly includes the parody of characters, language, theme, history, plot and so on. Snow White by Donald Barthelme, for example, is a parody of Grimm's fairy tales. Fragment is a linguistic form advocated by Donald Barthelme, which embodies the fragmentation. The fragment in the novel has no center, which caused the confusion of the separation from the same center, and it is also a kind of uncertainty. When these different types of fragments are put into the same text, collages have evolved into the main means of reconstruction instead of the lines of the story. In Snow White, various languages are juxtaposed to form a polyphonic world, confusing the boundaries of reality and imagination. 3.2 Previous studies on Snow White Snow White has been the subject of widespread praise since its very publication in 1967. According to Italo Calvino (2006), Donald Barthelme applies the old role into a new text by changing its initial meanings into treating people#8217;s imagination in an ironic way or turning the traditional literary works which extol love in a totally different way. Snow white, standing for confusing and ironic reality, marks the beginning of postmodern literature and is characteristic of postmodern features. For instance, Nicholas Sloboda (1997) points out that as a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Barthelme has a well-established reputation as a writer of quixotic short stories and caricatural sketches. In addition, he has published a number of "novels," of which his Snow White is a playful mid-1960s counter-cultural, incongruous reconstruction of the popularized Disney version of the traditional fairy-tale. He Fengli (2003) holds the same view and believes that Snow White reflects the characteristics of postmodern literature by giving full play to parody and collage. Contrastive with the plot and characters, language becomes the real protagonist. Most research just refers to one or two postmodern features and lacks system; however, this thesis aims to pull these features together and find out what the writer intends to pass on through these postmodern features. Some explore the work from a totally different perspective. Liang (2011) focuses on the deconstructive study on Donald Barthelme#8217;s Snow White Based on Post-modernism. Bian (2015), also interested in deconstruction, reveals that Barthelme is a famous postmodern American writer and his Snow White exhibits an intensely postmodern style. By a subversive reconstruction of the classic fairy tale, the novel expresses the author#8217;s criticism of social realities and the idiosyncratic emphasis that there are no fairy tales or fairy characters in the real life. Based on a textual reading of Snow White and analysis of the creative techniques, this paper will adopt a postmodern deconstructive perspective in interpreting and reflecting on the novel. Some focus on other aspects. Rachele (2016) examined the relationship between material waste, late capitalism, and the language of Donald Barthelme#8217;s fiction, with particular attention to Snow White (1967) whereas Wu (2016) studies Snow White from the perspective of feminism. 3.3 Problems in the previous studies In terms of previous studies on Snow White, two characteristics can be summarized: most studies focus on the writing style; some research theories and perspectives are different, which is a great help for us to understand the literary work. But previous studies have following two problems. First, rather than relatively independent, all the studies are not comprehensive and systematic enough. They are all about one or two postmodern features or independent content and too fragmentary to form a complete and interrelated system of research. However, this paper will analyze three features to form a system. Secondly, research perspectives are relatively single. Most studies just attach their importance to the themes; as a consequence, a number of studies are not comprehensive. This essay will focus on not only postmodern features but background and content. Works cited Chen, Xilin. [程锡麟], ”碎片是我信任的唯一形式”#8212;谈唐纳德#183;巴塞尔姆的创作.外国文学, 2001, (3): 12-16. Cheng, Liangyou. [程良友], 论拼贴是后现代主义的创作核心. 安阳师范学院学报, 2007, (3) : 85-86. Cong, Juan. [丛娟], 后现代主义文学基本特征探析. 广西社会科学, 2005, (6): 87-89. Heitkemper-Yates, Michael David. ”Mytho-historical Mode : Metafictional Parody and Postmodern High Irony in the Works of Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, and Ishmael Reed.” Diss. U of Edinburgh, 2013. Huber, Irmtraud. Literature after Postmodernism: Reconstructive Fantasies. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan., 2014. Liu, Hui. [刘辉], 从《白雪公主》看巴塞尔姆解构文本意义的策略及意图. 当代外国文学, 2007, (4): 38-46. Ma, Ying. [马莹], 从断裂与碎片中重构意义#8212;#8212;《白雪公主后传》的认知叙事解读. 学术界, 2015, (3): 131-138. Moore, Helen. Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound. Texas: AM University Press, 2001. Mullins, Matthew. Postmodernism in Pieces: Materializing the Social in U.S. Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Paley, Grace. Laughter in the American Dark: An Appreciation. London: The Guardian, 1989. Sloboda, Nicholas. ”Heteroglossia and Collage: Donald Barthelme's Snow White.” Mosaic (Winnipeg) 30 (1997): 109. Witsell, Emily. Literary Research and American Postmodernism: Strategies and Sources. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman Littlefield Publishers, 2016. Wu, Jie. [吴洁], 巴塞尔姆与后现代主义小说. 学术论坛, 2011, (9) :100-103. Xiang, Rui. [项睿], 试论《白雪公主后传》中的戏仿颠覆. 渤海大学学报(哲学社会科学版), 2011, (3) : 79-82. Yu, Hongqin. [于洪芹], 从巴塞尔姆的语言拼贴风格看其后现代主义观点. 疯狂英语(教师版), 2009, (4) : 143-144.
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