Northern Genealogies in ‘The Snow Queen’ and Frozen

Morten Bartnæs

doi:10.7557/13.5478

Authors

Morten Bartnæs UiT The Arctic University of Norway

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5478

Keywords:

The Snow Queen, Sneedronningen, H. C. Andersen, Frozen, Genealogy, Northerness, Arctic literature

Abstract

H. C. Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’ (1844) and its self-professed adaptation Frozen (2013) both maintain a combined focus on origins and development. I approach the two texts as narratives that explain aspects of human life by showing how they came into being – as accounts that, although not primarily historical, are still bound up with genealogical ways of thinking: how, and from what beginnings, do humans and their communities evolve? What happens in the transition from non-existence to being? In both texts, the northern setting is a requisite part of these narratives of development – in the dual sense of growth and emergence. In this article, I describe the interaction between the texts’ genealogical discourses and their northern settings. I also discuss how the two texts reflect and rephrase current and past discourses where northerness is associated with genealogical issues.

Author Biography

Morten Bartnæs, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Morten Bartnæs is associate professor at the Department of Education at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His previous work related to the subject of this volume includes the thesis Syv artikler om kulde og litteratur (2014) and articles on Torquato Tasso’s Il re Torrismondo and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

References

Andersen, Hans Christian. 2007 [1844]. ‘The Snow Queen’. In The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, ed. by Maria Tatar, trans. by Maria Tatar and Julie K. Allen. New York: Norton.

Augustine. 1953 [ca. 400]. Letters, trans. by Wilfrid Parsons, vol. 3. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press (= The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, v. 20).

Bevir, Mark. 2008. ‘What is Genealogy?’ Journal of the Philosophy of History 2: 263–275. https://doi.org/10.1163/187226308X335958

Bunch, Ryan. 2017. ‘“Love Is an Open Door”: Revising and Repeating Disney’s Musical Tropes in Frozen’. In Contemporary Musical Film, ed. by Kevin J. Donnelly and Beth Carroll, 89–104. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Cairns, Douglas L. 2002 [1993]. Aidôs. The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Christensen, Erik M. 2000. Een på brillen. In Det (h)vide spejl. Analyser af H. C. Andersens ‘Sneedronningen’, ed. by Finn Barlby, 35–53. Copenhagen: Dråben.

Conrad, JoAnn. 2018. ‘Into the “Land of Snow and Ice”: Racial Fantasies in the Fairy-Tale Landscapes of the North’. Narrative Culture 5(2): 255–290. https://doi.org/10.13110/narrcult.5.2.0255

Coogan, Michael D. (ed.) 2018. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crosby, Sarah Chase. 2016. ‘Letting Gendered Spaces Go: Striving toward Gender and Nature Balance through Bonding in Disney’s Frozen and Maleficent’. Master’s thesis, Iowa State University. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/15162

de Mylius, Johan. 2000. Forvandlingens billeder. In Det (h)vide spejl. Analyser af H. C. Andersens ‘Sneedronningen’, ed. by Finn Barlby, 71–88. Copenhagen: Dråben.

Del Vecho, Peter (Producer), Buck, Chris, and¬¬ Lee, Jennifer. (Directors). 2014 [2013]. Frozen (Animated motion picture, DVD edition). [s.l.]: Walt Disney Pictures/Buena Vista Home Entertainment.

Dvergsdal, Alvhild. 1988. H. C. Andersen: ‘Sneedronningen’ – et eventyr for voksne. Norskrift 58, 12–34.

Epictetus 1959 [ca. 100]. The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments, trans. by William Abbott Oldfather, vol. 2. London and Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press/Loeb Classical Library.

Foucault, Michel. 1984 [1971]. ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’. In The Foucault Reader, ed. by Paul Rabinow, 76–100. New York: Pantheon Books.

Holmes, Su. 2015. ‘“That Perfect Girl is Gone”: Pro-ana, Anorexia and Frozen (2013) as an “Eating Disorder” Film’. Participations 12(2): 98–120.

Jensen, Johannes V. 1945 [1908–1922]. The Long Journey, trans. by Arthur G. Chater. New York: Knopf.

Lederer, Wolfgang. 1986. The Kiss of the Snow Queen: Hans Christian Andersen and Man’s Redemption by Woman. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Lee, Jennifer. 2013. Frozen. Final Shooting Draft. Retrieved 15 November 2019. http://web.archive.org/web/20140123155432/http://waltdisneystudiosawards.com/downloads/frozen-screenplay.pdf

MacNeilage, Peter F. 2008. The Origin of Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Macaluso, Michael. 2016. ‘The Postfeminist Princess: Public Discourse and Disney’s Curricular Guide to Feminism’. In Disney, Culture and Curriculum, ed. by Jennifer A. Sandlin and Julie C. Garlen, 73–86. New York and London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315661599

Milton, John. 2007 [1667]. Paradise Lost, ed. by Barbara K. Lewalski. Malden: Blackwell.

Nagel, Brigitte. 1991. Die Welteislehre: Ihre Geschichte und ihre Rolle im ‘Dritten Reich’. Stuttgart: Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik.

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, s.v. ‘Bedstemoder’. Accessed 15 November, 2019, https://ordnet.dk/ods/ordbog?query=bedstemoder

Rank, Otto. 1993 [1924]. The Trauma of Birth, ed. by E. James Lieberman. New York: Dover.

Resene, Michelle. 2017. ‘From Evil Queen to Disabled Teen: Frozen Introduces Disney's First Disabled Princess’. Disability Studies Quarterly 37(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v37i2.5310

Rudloff, Maja. 2016. ‘(Post)feminist Paradoxes: The Sensibilities of Gender Representation in Disney’s Frozen’. Outskirts 35: 1–20.

Schmerheim, Philipp. 2015. ‘Die Eiskönigin (Frozen. USA, Regisseur: Chris Buck und Jennifer Lee, 2013)’. In Lexikon des Kinder- und Jugendfilms im Kino, im Fernsehen und auf Video. Teil 1: Kinder- und Jugendfilme. 47. Ergänzungslieferung, ed. by Horst Schäfer, 1–9. Meitingen: Corian.

Steinhoff, Heike. 2017. ‘“Let It Go”? Re-Inventing the Disney Fairy Tale in Frozen’. In Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between: Challenging Gender and Sexuality Stereotypes in Children’s Entertainment Media, ed, by CarrieLynn D. Reinhard and Christopher J. Olson, 159–176. Lanham: Lexington books.

Topsøe-Jensen, Helge. 1971. Buket til Andersen: Bemærkninger til femogtyve Eventyr. København: Gads forlag.

TvTropes. 2019. ‘Frozen’. Accessed 17 November 2019. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Disney/Frozen

Wagner, Richard. 2012 [1843]. Der fliegende Holländer. Bilingual edition, trans. by Lionel Salter. Richmond: Overture Publishing.

Weitzman, Erica. 2007. ‘The World in Pieces: Concepts of Anxiety in H. C. Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”’. MLN 122(5): 1105–1123.

Whitfield, Sarah. 2017. ‘Frozen as a Feminist Disney Musical’. In The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen: Critical Approaches from Snow White to Frozen, ed. by George Rodosthenous, 221–238. London: Bloomsbury Methuen.

Yngborn, Katarina. 2010. Auf den Spuren einer ‘Poetik des Weißen’: Funktionalisierung von Weiß in der skandinavischen Literatur der Moderne. Freiburg: Rombach.