Dear Colleagues,
We recently published an article titled as "Deconstructing a Disempowering Normative Identity: Angela Carter’s Adaptations of the Ashputtle Story" in Interlitteraria journal. We present the information and the abstract of the article below. If you would like to have a copy of it, please write to per.bauhn@lnu.se or fulyatepe@aydin.edu.tr
Best regards,
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fatma Fulya Tepe, İstanbul Aydın University, Turkey
Emeritus Prof. Dr. Per Bauhn, Linnaeus University, Sweden
Per Bauhn & Fatma Fulya Tepe. (2022) Deconstructing a Disempowering Normative Identity: Angela Carter’s Adaptations of the Ashputtle Story, Vol. 27 No. 2, 248-260.
Deconstructing a Disempowering Normative Identity: Angela Carter’s Adaptations of the Ashputtle Story
,
PER BAUHN
FATMA FULYA TEPE
Abstract.
Historically speaking, fairy tales have been powerful instruments
in the education of children and in the transmission of moral standards from
one generation to the next, from the dominant class to less powerful groups. As
they make certain ways of life or ideals appear attractive and others repellent,
fairy tales also contribute to form normative identities in their young readers.
A normative identity combines a descriptive account of who one is with a
normative account of what one ought to do. Such identities can be empowering
or disempowering. Fairy tales can be seen as using a technique of narrative
persuasion to impose normative identities on their audiences, making certain
ideals and ways of life appear natural and self-evident. To deconstruct a
disempowering normative identity imposed by a fairy tale involves separating
its descriptive and normative components and making vivid the problematic
aspects of the norms, values, and ideals involved. In this article, we analyse
Angela Carter’s deconstruction of a disempowering normative identity imposed
on women by the Ashputtle fairy tale, as told by the Grimm brothers. In our
analysis, based on close reading and philosophical criticism, we reveal how
Carter herself makes use of the fairy-tale technique of narrative persuasion in
her deconstructive work, vividly bringing out certain appalling consequences
of the ideals of submission and self-sacrifice implied by the Grimm version of
the Ashputtle story, thereby also subverting that version.
Keywords: Angela Carter, Ashputtle, fairy tales, close reading, analytic moral
philosophy, normative identity, deconstruction, narrative persuasion
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