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oa Deconstructie met een missie - Postmodernistische aspecten in de sprookjes van Sybren Polet
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Nederlandse Letterkunde, Volume 18, Issue 3, Dec 2013, p. 194 - 211
Abstract
Sybren Polet’s place within Dutch literature is hard to determine. This essay seeks to connect Polet’s fairy tales to postmodernism, which can be described as an antirealist movement that deconstructs conventional (linguistic) frames. Postmodern fairy tales are also frequently defined by unsettling traditional role patterns, which Polet’s stories also exhibit. In his fairy tales, however, the reader is often morally instructed, which contrasts with the postmodern aversion to posit an explicit ideology in stories. This observation can be clarified by considering Polet’s affinities with Marxist poetics: the reader needs to come to terms with an alternative perception of the world. Polet’s fairy tales can justifiably be considered anti-fairy tales since they confront the reader to accept a morality that negates bourgeois conventions.