Mise en Abyme and Katabasis: Helen Oyeyemi's and Tanith Lee's Reimaginings of "Snow White"

Abstract:This essay interrogates the ways in which, through the mise en abyme narrative strategy in White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi and White as Snow by Tanith Lee, various tropes from the Grimm and Disney retellings of "Snow White" are related to the mythic descent to the Underworld, known as the Hellenic katabasis (κατάβασις). Findings reveal that the connection between the mise en abyme refractive narrative strategy and the trope of the katabasis is deployed differently by the two authors to examine trauma in relation to age, gender, and dominant racial discourses.