AN INTERTEXTUAL APPROACH: A POEM “SNOW WHITE AND SEVEN DWARFS”

Dilek Tüfekçi Can ¹

The fairy tale “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs” collected by Grimm Brothers has inspired a wide variety of realms from screen to comics, advertisements to billboards and musicals to theatre presentations since it was first published in 1812. In the art of literature, the tale has been adapted to many different types of genres; indeed the American confessionalist poet, Anne Sexton (1928-1974) has transformed the structure of the tale from “text-based” to “poem-based” or rather from prose to verse, thus ascribing the tale a new version which is the most creative and challenging amongst all the previous adaptations. Sexton, has adapted the fairy tale under the same title of “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs (1971)” by modifying the original text from innovative aspects not only in terms of structural but also linguistic and thematic features. Thus, by changing the essence of the tale, she estranges the tale from the child reader and creates proximity to adult readership. By transforming the tale into a contemporary style Sexton in fact reflects her confessionalist aspects that are conveyed through the sexual images she has coined for the purpose of reacting against the American symbolist poetry. In this article “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs” will be interpreted in terms of intertextuality and reader response theory by referring to the poet’s confessional manner.

Keywords
American Poetry , Confessionalist Poet, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, Intertextuality, Reception Theory,