Aspects of narcissus myth in Marina Colasanti’s “the first only” fairy tale

Abstract

When the king comes across the suffering of his daughter who wants to have a friend to play with and to establish true bonds of friendship, the solution he finds is to present her to the largest mirror of the castle, which brings to the princess the world of her imagination. In this frame of delusion, she comes across and is enchanted by her own reflected image, believing herself to be the other she sought so much, making interdiscursive reference to Narcissus myth. From here the princess will face difficulties along her journey in search of self-knowledge until, for the last time, she encounters her reflection, then, in the lake. This work of literary analysis of the short story “The First Only”, by the writer Marina Colasanti, is based on the theory about frames, commonly used in studies of visual arts, but which has recently been approached in literature. This theory is justified here, because the girl’s imaginary world of happiness and play is delimited first by the mirror and, subsequently, by the lakeshore where she sees her reflection for the last time and which no longer represents her imagination, but her inner self. To this end, studies by Ortega y Gasset and Eduardo Peñuela Cañizal will be used to base the analysis on frames. The foundations about intertextuality, significant in the tale because of the dialogue with Ovid’s Narcissus myth, will be supported by Tiphaine Samoyault’s book Intertextuality.