| A. S. Byatt (1936—) is one of the most famous and intellectual contemporary women novelists. Many of her novels are learned ones, in which the subject matters are always about literary and academic activities and the characters are usually intellectuals. Meanwhile Byatt is an effective imitator of different styles and genres, and her works always contain a multitude of allusions. As a result, most of her works rarely make for easy reading. For the width of the contents, the diversity of the characters and the complexity of the psychological situations, Byatt's novels are usually considered owning the power of enlightenment. The novel Possession: A Romance (1990), which is acknowledged to be Byatt's most impressive achievement, interweaves two distinct stories that took place in different historical periods. In the novel, two modern scholars Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey discover a collection of letters and testify a previously unknown love affair between the two imaginary Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte, which also bring about a parallel affection between the two modern literary critics. After its publication, the novel quickly won the appraisals of the readers and the critics for its original structure, as well as for the novelty and complexity of its themes. This thesis, in the light of Gerard Genette's theory of narratology, analyzes the narrative strategies employed in the novel and their functions in presenting Byatt's points of view on history. The paper is divided into seven chapters. And Chapter One is a brief introduction to the whole thesis. The chapter contains the general information of the novelist Byatt and the summary of her literary works, in which it points out those names that greatly influence Byatt's intellectual life. Meanwhile, in this chapter, the author of the thesis clarifies the reason of choosing the present research, as well as states the objectives and the methodology of the research. Chapter Two begins with the summary of the novel Possession. Then the author of the thesis generalizes the critical responses to the novel. After its publication, Possession received a large number of interpretations from different facets, including themes of the novel, the poetic, the characteristic language of the novel, and the unique narrative devices presented in the novel. Though a few critics have noticed the special narrative strategies Byatt's used in Possession, there is no critic who studies the narrative devices in the light of one definite narrative theory. Chapter Three is a brief introduction to the literary theory applied in the thesis. This part gives a general introduction to the narrative theory of Genette, one of the famous French narratologists, and explains some important terms that are employed in the thesis. Chapter Four starts with a summary of the general narrative strategies employed in Possession, and then comes to the analysis of the narrative levels of the novel. The novel Possession is a multiple leveled narration, in which the 20th century modern period scenes construct the first narrative level, the historical texts of the 19th century make up the second narrative level and the poems, fairy tales that depict the remote ancient period form the third narrative level. And through the parallel description of those three narrative levels, Byatt reflects the whole developing process of human history at the highest degree, and makes reader unconsciously compare those historical periods and thus perceive that the past always connects with the present and influences the present. Chapter Five deals with the narrative time of Possession from aspects of the none-chronological time order, the unequal temporal duration and the diversified time frequency. In the novel, there are many analepses, which always disrupt the linear time narration, blur the boundaries between the past and the present. Byatt employs different time durations in the novel according to people's cognitive ability to the understanding of different historical periods. And cons... |
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