Barthelme's 'Snow White', Calvino's 'The Castle of Crossed Destinies' and contemporary discourse on the fairy tale: Feminist and Foucauldian approaches

In this dissertation I will examine a complex of discourses associated with fairy tales by applying Foucauldian theories on discourse and feminist literary theories to them. This thesis also explores the relationship between postmodern literary works and critical theoretical works.; Chapter One, "Theoretical Background: The Spinning Wheel of Discourses," introduces most of the discourses within literary and fairy tale theories and defines specific terms. Chapter Two, "Mother-Daughter Relations: Lack, Conflict and Desire," focuses on the logocentric and phallocentric discourses that dominate psychoanalysis and fairy tale criticism and the construction of desire as a major conflict within the mother-daughter relationship. In a reversal of traditional discursive relations, I show how Irigaray, Chodorow and other critics represent a more positive model for mother-daughter relations and for women's desire.; Chapter Three, "Truth, Beauty Fantasies and Domestic Ideals: Barthelme's Subversions in Snow White," examines traditional discursive practices in the fairy tale that perceive beauty as a discourse of truth originating in myth and investigates the mechanisms which objectify, idealize and universalize fairy tale female characters. In the transformation of a children's fairy tale into an adult one, Barthelme in Snow White replaces symbolism and magic with consumerism and technology. He also destroys the character-symbols as described in the traditional fairy tale.; Chapter Four, "Calvino's The Castle and Narrative Theories: One Eye to the Reader-Child and the Other to the Reader-Sage," bridges the gap between literary theories and fairy tale theories in Calvino's novel. It assesses the fact that Calvino's "literature machine" works on a principle that is the reverse of Propp's structuralist method. It investigates the relation between imitation and intertextuality in the fairy tale and Ariosto's Orlando furioso. It takes up reader response techniques and interpretation to explain how meaning travels in The Castle from the visual text to the written subtext and vice versa.