Narrative Space and Transtextual Dialogues in Emma Donoghue’s 'Kissing the Witch'

Abstract

This article aims to introduce a critical reading of the narrative space of Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by the Irish author Emma Donoghue. In this collection of rewritten fairy tales, Donoghue not only thematically reimagines the popular classical fairy tales penned by Grimms, Beaumont, Perrault and Andersen, she also makes the protagonist/narrator of each story the narratee of the next one, allowing for a dialogue between diverse figures from oral and written tradition across cultures. The narrative strategy and framing technique deployed by Donoghue enables a transtextual space of gathering where previously objectified and focalized female characters of canonical tales engage in dialogue through storytelling. The possibilities offered by this transtextual agency of rewriting will be explored from a narratological perspective, paying particular attention to gender-informed politics of reimagining canonical narratives. As examples of “rewriting as displacement”, according to Doležel’s categorization, the tales in Kissing the Witch create story-worlds that affirm transgression and flow against all forms of stabilizing and restricting mechanisms of normativity. Talking back to the canon and literary convention through first-person narratives of classical fairy tale characters, the collection offers an unsettling example of the liberating potential of storytelling against ossified and ossifying power mechanisms.