「백설공주」 민담의 비교 연구

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the transformation of the well known folk tale, Snow White in the differing media of oral composition, print, and film. It is focused here on the versions of the Grimms, from the manuscript, the first edition, the second, the final, and in addition Walt Disney`s animation Snow White and the senven Dwarfs. The Grimms offer several variant texts of their Snow White, altering the story somewhat in each of their editions from 1812 to 1857. The earliest known text is in manuscript of 1810, where the beautiful queen is the girl`s natural mother, who first wishes for her and is then dismayed by her ever-increasing beauty. It is the mother herself who takes Snow White to the forest on the pretext of picking flowers, and abandons her there. Here it is Snow White`s father who finds and removes the coffin, and then orders his royal physicians to revive her. After this surprising climax we find the more familiar marriage to a prince and the queen`s dance of death in heated iron shoes. Except for some changes of wording the basic story is the one already familiar to us, untill we reach the death-rebirth motif at the conclusion. In the first published edition of 1812 the natural mother is still the villain, but this time she orders her huntsman to destroy Snow White in the forest, and to return with her lungs and liver as proof. The escape to the dwarfs` house and the three attempts on her life are unchanged, but this time the prince himself carries away the coffin. His servants accidentally revive Snow White when they strike her in anger, thus dislodging the apple. In the second edition of 1819 the natural mother is replaced by the stepmother and this constellation continues to the final edition of 1857. In each edition other minor changes were made, until the final text became the ‘authoritative’ version. In its transformation from the manuscript to the final edition the tale has lost its emergent quality, despite the appearance of variety in the Grimm editions. The film Snow White and the seven Dwarfs (1937) closely follows the general pattern of the Grimm tale, despite the various changes motivated by visualization. For example the queen`s fatal plunge over the cliff instead of dancing to her death in heated iron shoes. Here the seven dwarfs become central characters. Long trained to accept only one text as original, we consider the Grimm version of Snow White as authoritative. It is important to know, there is no singe original or authentic oral text.