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ENGLISH LITERATURE AND POPULAR CULTURE
2018/2019TANDEM
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI VERONA DIPARTIMENTO DI LINGUE E LETTERATURE STRANIERE
Dr RAFFAELE CUTOLO
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Postmodern fairy tales
Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom, there lived several characters whose biographies enjoyed worldwide popularity. There were innocent girls tormented by evil stepmothers, there were giants who were taller than trees, and children as small as a thumb; there were little girls who got lost in the woods to find themselves picking up flowers in the company of a wolf, or in front of houses made entirely of sweets. There were fairies who were good and there were witches who were evil, and of course there were valiant princes who never failed to rescue their damsels in distress. In this kingdom wolves could talk, mice could sew, and cats wore boots; a pumpkin could become a carriage, an apple a fatal weapon, and a bean the staircase to heaven. Once upon a time, this was the classical fairy tale, and then there suddenly came postmodernism.
Rewritings - revisions - retellings
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Literary revisions and rewritings –or retellings– of the fairy tales, re-examine and re-invent the genre in a way that is differently elaborate.
Rewritings - Retellings
narrate the tales differently, either by changing the point of view or by providing details that are usually not told by the original tales
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Revisions
alter them in a much more elaborate way, openly contrasting the tradition they belong to, often operating a subversion of the archetypes of that very tradition.
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Postmodern Revisions
re-positioning of the tales, in which tradition is f i ltered through different perspectives, dealing mainly with diversity, sexuality and the horror .
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dive
rsit
y
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sexgender
healthsocial class ethnicity
Characters have in the retelling/revision the opposite
sex compared to the classical version.
Introduction of LGBTQI characters. Subversion of
heternormativity, patriarchy, phallocracy. (Queer revisions,
feminist revisions)
Introduction of characters with disabilities, illnesses.
Variety of social classes. Rich/poor
dichotomy is subverted.
Different ethnicities within the same
fairy tale.
diversity
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The fairy tale has been exploring man in all its complexities, and the postmodern revision especially has functioned as a protest and a denouncement against a discriminating
white-phallocratic-hetero-normative tradition.
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The role of women in fairy tales has been analysed, deconstructed and reconstructed, re-invented and reconsidered and the encounter of the fairy tale with feminist theories has resulted in a great production of retellings and revisions which focussed on the female characters and on their desires, needs
Angela Carter Virginia Hamilton Emma Donoghue
Transpositions
all the nonliterary adaptations of the classical fairy tales.
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films, music, theatre, internet, apps
Transpositions
the appropriation of the tale
its translation into and onto the new medium.
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Transpositions
Appropriation always involves translation of some kind. [...] A d a p t a t i o n a l w a y s i n v o l v e s remaking.”118 This remaking carries an “ethical responsibility”119 that moves in two opposite directions
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Transpositions
two opposite directions
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retrospectively, towards the hypotext, which must be treated respectfully through undamaging interpretation
prospectively, towards the audience, to whom the adaptor has an obligation of credibility.
Transpositions
relevance vouches for the survival of the text. Such survival, according to Derrida, is to be intended as both “ f o r t l e b e n a n d ü b e r l e b e n : prolonged life, continuous life, living on, but also life after death.”
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INTERTEXTUALITY
t1
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t2
Julia Kristeva, “Bakhtin, le mot, le dialogue et le roman”, 1967
INTERTEXTUALITY
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Intertextuality characterises all texts, intended here in its widest possible meaning, thus including all kinds of textuality: literary and non-literary.
Bakhtin: “ we live in a world of others’ words”
ways, moves, habits, shows, and culture
INTERTEXTUALITY
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The intertextual possible connections that may occur between t1 and t2 augment when associated with the audience’s subjectivities, since the perception and reception of t2 depend on the receiver’s knowledge of t1.
interpretation
INTERTEXTUALITY
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fairy-tale merging, it could be said that in order for such fusion to evade the metanarrative limit, there should occur simultaneously:
a) decontextualisationb) spatio-temporal digression c) recontextualisationd) interactione) transversal integration
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Queer Theory
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Queer Theory
anything at odds with the “normal”
???
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Queer Theory
???
maleheterosexualwhite
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Queer Theory
???maleheterosexualwhite
“normalisation” of gender roles
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Queer Theory
???maleheterosexualwhite
“normalisation” of gender roles
POWERpolitical
institutionaleconomic
social
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Queer Theoryre
ject
ion
of th
eori
es
of id
entit
y ba
sed
on
binary oppositions
male supremacy
heteronormativity
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Queer Theoryin
vest
igat
ion
on fluidity of sexual identity
complexity of representation of gender
construction of the heteronorm
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Queer Theory: Judith Butler
Judith Butler, in full Judith Pamela Bu t le r, (bo rn February 24 , 1956, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.),
American scholar whose theories of the performative nature of gender and sex were influential within cultural theory, queer theory, and some schools of philosophical feminism from the late 20th century.
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Queer Theory: Judith Butler
(1987). Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France.
(1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
(1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”
(2004). Undoing Gender
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Queer Theory: Judith Butler
Gender: not the result of nature but it’s socially constructed.
gender norms are cultural (replicated and transmitted) - therefore acquired.
exaggerated representations of masculinity and femininity
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Queer Theory: Judith Butler
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DAD MUM
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Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch
‘The Tale of the Shoe’ is based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Cinderella. ‘The Tale of the Bird’ is based on Hans Andersen’s Thumbelina. ‘The Tale of the Rose’ is based on Madame le Prince de Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast. ‘The Tale of the Apple’ is based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Snow White. ‘The Tale of the Handkerchief’ is based on the Grimms’ folk tale of the Goose Girl. ‘The Tale of the Hair’ is based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Rapunzel.
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Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch‘The Tale of the Brother’ is based on Hans Andersen’s Snow Queen. ‘The Tale of the Spinster’ is based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Rumpelstilskin and similar stories of magical helpers. ‘The Tale of the Cottage’ is based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Hansel and Gretel. ‘The Tale of the Skin’ is based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Donkeyskin. ‘The Tale of the Needle’ is based on Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty. ‘The Tale of the Voice’ is based on Hans Andersen’s Little Mermaid. ‘The Tale of the Kiss’ is not based on any source text.
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Kissing the Witch
- FT meme - happy ending - Prince - Princess
- there is only ONE Witch
- Witch = meme
- female - evil - opposed to Beauty - voiceless character
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Witchthe new storyteller
This provides the reader with a renovated perspective because the narration uses a completely new voice, a new point of view.
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Witchthe new storyteller
Into the Woods (musical)
Wicked (novel)
Maleficent (film)
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feminist revisionism
- subversion of patriarchy - female activeness / passiveness - subjectness / agency
Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch
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narration
- Once upon a time there was (in the classical fairy tale)
Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch
third-person narration
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narration
- Will I tell you my own story, it’s the tale of a
(in Kissing the Witch)
Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch
first-person narration
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Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch
First-person narration
the I
These stories are the product of a postmodern storytelling I.
