ABSTRACT

Donald Barthelme is an American novelist and short story writer who is known for his playful postmodernist style. He is even praised as the literary god-father of young writers nowadays owing to his significant position in American literature. His stories rely on a series of seemingly unrelated details instead of resorting to traditional plot structures and linear narrative sequences. Barthelme focuses more on fragments rather than complete narratives in his stories. His Snow White is such an outstanding representative work of postmodern literature. He makes a thorough subversion in both the content and form of Snow White in Grimm’s Fairy Tales and turns the original fairy tale into a literary carnival featured by black humor.

This thesis draws a comparison between the novel and Grimm’s Snow White and Seven Dwarfs in terms of characterization, development of plot, and themes to shed light on Barthelme’s postmodernism features. Besides, the writing skills and narrative techniques of Snow White will be discussed in detail. What’s more, this thesis attempts to investigate into the social background where the novel was written and Barthelme’s writing intention as well.

Keywords: Snow White; postmodernism; uncertainty; collage; fairy tale

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-2

2.1 Critical Studies on Barthelme’s Snow White-2

2.2 Critical Inadequacy and Plan of the Thesis-3

Chapter Three POSTMODERNISM IN SNOW WHITE-4

3.1 Parody and Irony-4

3.1.1 Characters -6

3.1.2 Plot -7

3.1.3 Theme-8

3.2 Collage-9

3.3 Uncertainty-11

Chapter Four CONCLUSION-13

WORKS CITED-15