The Novel Snow White Written By Donald Barthelme On The Theory Of Cultural Memory

The novel Snow White written by Donald Barthelme is the research subject of this thesis. Based on the other’s research, the thesis is trying to analyze the novel Snow White how to memory and reconstruct the classical Grimms’ fairy tale from the angle of cultural memory, and then analyzes the novel how to make a literary presentation of characters of fairy tale in order to make a thorough inquiry of special aesthetic and practical significance of cultural memory.First of all, this thesis defines the Grimm’s Fairy Tales as a cultural text according to the Asman’s theory. On this basis, it makes an investigation of Snow White written by Donald Barthelme how to reconstruct such a cultural text subversively. Then it analyzes the figures of the characters concretely in the novel Snow White. The analysis shows that as a cultural text, Grimm’s fairy tales text provides a social value of the true, the good and the beautiful, which creates a clean and bright fairy tale world, while the background of Barthelme’s novel is set in the American modern city in 1960 s. And it not only eliminates the spiritual moral ideals of the fairy tales, but also deconstructs the traditional values and moral ideals. In the novel, Barthelme has made a subversive memory in the shaping of characters. For example, the Snow white is chaste and noble, the seven dwarfs are kind and hard-working, and the prince is brave and justice in the Grimms’ fairy tale while the Snow White is still beautiful but sensual, the seven dwarfs are rouge and lewd, and the prince is timid and cowardly in the novel. In a word, the reconstruction of the Grimms’ fairy tale text and the remodeling of the fairy tale characters is a literary memory to an important cultural text and memory figures. In this process, the author not only eliminates the education function of the cultural text, but also deconstructs the fairy tale characters by the way of summoning and activating. Its purpose is not to preach, but to call in question and criticize.