ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores the text worlds of an Absurdist text, in order to demonstrate its textual and cognitive mechanics. Text world theory provides a methodological framework through which both factual and fictional discourses may be systematically examined in their entirety: from the pragmatic circumstances surrounding their genesis, through to the conceptual consequences of specific language choices. The structure of the passage can be translated into a text world diagram, which makes evident the imbalance between the detail contained in the episode’s initial text world, in which Snow White lets down her hair, and that contained in the world-switch created by her direct speech. The majority of critics writing on Snow White devote at least part of their attention to certain linguistic incongruities also contained within Barthelme’s text. Particularly helpful is an early stylistic analysis by McNall, the main focus of which lies in the identifiable patterns of lexical repetition in Barthelme’s text.
