The Continuum of Grief: From Scandinavian Mythology to Zen Buddhism: Janet Frame's Intertextual Strategies in Snowman, Snowman

In the wake of Richards Benton's "Keats and Zen" (published in Philosophy East and West [1966]), this paper sets out to examine Janet Frame's appropriation of Buddhist philosophy in Snowman, Snowman (1962). The novella's allusions to a Buddhist-like epistemology, together with its subtle references to Scandinavian myths, however, have so far remained uncovered and are therefore best approached in the light of what has been called "the suppressed intertextuality in post-colonial writing". The author's intention in this paper is twofold: on the one hand, the author will suggest that post-colonial writers do not necessarily write against the Western canon and that maintaining the contrary amounts to vindicating the centrality of imperial texts in the contemporary literary scene - an endeavour which is hardly post-colonial. On the other hand, the author will go some way towards shifting eastward the core of Frame's ontology by suggesting that her poetics is anchored not only in Western thinking, but also, perhaps more importantly so, in Eastern philosophy. The author’s primary impulse, however, in examining the interplay between canonical and peripheral intertextualities, is to illuminate in fundamental fashion the haunting beauty of the writer's
universe and the lyricism of Snowman, Snowman.