A Study Of Donald Barthelme’s Snow White From The Perspective Of Ethical Criticism

Donald Barthelme is a famous American postmodern novelist,and Snow White is his representative work.This postmodern fairy tale has attracted much public attention,which shows a completely different landscape from that of traditional fairy tales.This paper focuses on Barthelme’s postmodern fairy tale Snow White from the perspective of ethical criticism,and probes into the ethical meanings and significance of the text proper.By combining close reading,psychological analysis and other approaches,this thesis looks into the individual,interpersonal and ecological ethics,as Barthelme creatively engages in Snow White,exploring various ethical phenomena beyond the text and attempting to delineate the contour of postmodern ethicsDonald Barthelme’s Snow White works to shatter popular imagination of classical fairy tales.In Barthelme’s view,the beauty and happiness of life in fairy tales have become unethically vulnerable and sentimental in the face of the dark reality.However,people still have impractical illusions under the influence of those beautiful fairy tales In a subversive way,Barthelme rewrites the classical story and re-evaluates the fairy tale tradition,ethically and aesthetically.This novel displays the dark side of humanity,constructing a revolutionary postmodern fairy tale.This marks the advent of a new fairy tale tradition that represents the increasingly fragmented,flattened and decentered realities in the postmodern era.In this context,fairy tales are no longer synonymous of the bygone perfect world.This case study casts new light on the American postmodern fairy tale poetics and defines a distinctive juncture of postmodern ethics through engaging the fairy tale tradition.