An Intertextual Reading Of The Robber Bride

Honored as “Queen of Canadian Literature”,Margret Atwood is one of the most outstanding writers of contemporary Canada.The Robber Bride is the eighth novel of Atwood,which is full of exaggerated plots,sharp social contradictions and multiple narrative perspectives and has received much attention since it was published in 1993.However,those critics at home and abroad usually do the researches from the perspectives of feminism and writing skills to explore the awareness and rebellion of women.Only few papers study the novel from the intertextual aspect,so it is necessary to analyze the novel from the aspect of intertextuality.The theory of intertextuality was first put forward by French symbologist Julia Kristeva in 1960 s,which is a kind of text theory based on the structuralism and post-structuralism.Intertextuality refers to the relationship among texts,that is to say,there is no isolated text and all the texts have their intertexts.In addition,there are two kinds of classifications of intertextuality including the narrow sense and broad sense of intertextuality.The narrow sense of intertextuality put forward by Genette believes that intertextuality is the referential relationship which can be demonstrated between literature texts and other texts.And Kristeva's broad sense of intertextuality can be seen as a sum of relations between texts and its textual knowledge,codes and the signifying practices.The Robber Bride can be interpreted in both ways.This thesis tries to combine Kristeva's broad sense of intertextuality with Genette's narrow sense of intertextuality to interpret The Robber Bride.The narrow sense of intertextuality uses allusion and parody to show its intertextuality and hypertextuality.This thesis points out that Zenia alludes to the vampire Dracula and the other three women can also be regarded as the intertexts of the mythology The White Goddess.Atwood parodies the fairy tale The Robber Bridegroom to destroy the feminine images of women and creates a robber bride Zenia by subverting the gender differences.In addition,the childhood descriptions of Tony,Charis and Roz can also be seen as the parody of the pattern of bildungsroman.Although they have suffered from those miserable experiences,they learn from Zenia and become more mature.The broad sense of intertextuality analyzes the relationship between The Robber Bride and the biblical culture,the colonization history and immigrant social background of Canada.Through the description of living conditions of Canadians in the second half of 20 th century,Atwood shows her appeal to the national identity of Canada and Canadianness.Atwood combines traditional works with history and culture to create her own postmodernist writings,which not only provides a new writing idea for other writers,butalso offers a different perspective for readers.