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Abstract: The paper focuses on the phenomenon of adaptation of culturally significant texts in the book of poems “Transformations” by Anne Sexton, a prominent representative of American confessional poetry. The aim of the study is to identify factors that determine the semantic shift in her reinterpretations of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Two types of metatextual elements have been singled out in the course of the study and their pragmatic functions have been thoroughly explored. The analysis shows that metatexts can be incorporated directly in the original sentence of a well-known plot in the form of a current commentary allowing the author to develop the story and to draw the readers’ attention to the key moments of the original text. The other type of metatexts is located outside the sentence of a fairy-tale plot; it takes the form of a prologue or a frame consisting of a prologue and an epilogue telling stories of the present time. The text-within-a-text structure allows the reader to draw a parallel between the modern stories in the frame and the adaptations of classical fairy tales embedded within it. This structure gives the readers a key to explicate the potential meaning of a familiar story, questioning their customary views on it. The author studies the relationship between the possibility of inclusion of metatextual elements in reinterpretations and the change of their target audience.

About the author(s) :

Anna Z. Atlas
Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (Saint Petersburg, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3429-3238

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 02.09.2022; date of publication: 30.06.2023

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