The Echo Of History

A. S. Byatt (1936- ) is a celebrated British literary critic and novelist today. Acknowledged as the authority in literary criticism, she has written many essays and monologues about both her contemporary writers and giant literary figures in history like the famous romantic poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). As a novelist, she has published The Shadow of the Sun, The Game, Still Life, The Virgin in the Garden and so on, all of which have been well received. In 1990, her best novel Possession came out, and three months later it carried off the Booker Prize, the highest literary prize in Britain. It was praised as the most dazzling book of 1990 because of the diverse genres, stories covering thousands of years and plots for readers of different tastes.A. S. Byatt always bears a great interest in history and insists that"All history is novel". (Byatt, 2001:15) In her writings, she describes history through her novels and meanwhile involves history into novels. Possession is such an example. In Possession, various forms are used to narrate the story including poems, letters, fairy tales, and diaries and so on; the whole story covers a history of more than one thousand years: the ancient times, Victorian period and the modern times. So many genres and such a long story are all presented in an entity that an attentive study into the novel finds out that it has much to do with the application of diverse archetypes.It was Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the Swiss psychologist that for the first time brought forward the concept of"archetype"in his book Instinct and the Unconscious in 1919. He also discussed about how to use archetype in literature in his book Psychology and Literature published in 1922. He believed that literary works could be analyzed from such perspectives as narrative structure, character-types and symbols. However, archetype and archetypal criticism, in the sense of literature, were mainly founded by the Canadian literary critic, Northrop Frye (1912-1991). He defined archetypes as the recurring images in literary works and believed that archetype could recur in characters, plots and background development in literary works. Taking both the viewpoints of Jung and Frye into consideration, the author of this paper will analyze Possession mainly from the perspectives of narrative structure, characters and typical images with the help of the theory of archetypal criticism.This thesis consists of four chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. The introductory part briefly introduces A. S. Byatt and Possession, makes a literature review, and explains the perspective and the significance of this study. The first chapter is an overview of archetypal literary criticism.The second chapter, subdivided into three sections, is devoted to the analysis of the narrative structure from three different points of view. The first section is about the paradise pattern. Stories that happen in three periods respectively act in accord with the structure of paradise gained, paradise lost and paradise regained. The second section deals with the quest pattern. The whole story begins with the theft of Roland Michelle followed by an investigation or an adventure. After a series of hardships and dangers, the truth of the unknown letters gets revealed. The third section concentrates on the cyclical pattern of the story. In Possession, different genres are applied according to different historical periods. For example, stories of ancient times are mainly presented in forms of legend; as in Victorian periods, strict moral principles prevail and therefore, the love story in that era ends in a tragedy; what happen in the twentieth century are just satiric stories; anyway the end of the whole story is a pleasant one, a comic one. Although the successive application of legend, tragedy, satire and comedy is not exactly the same with the theory of mythos by Frye, they are similarly satisfactory in artistic effect.In the third chapter, three major female characters from the three periods—Melusine of ancient times, LaMotte in the Victorian period and Maud of modern times, are analyzed. A comparison of their differences and similarities finds out that they actually share the same archetype—the fairy Melusine from French legend. According to Frye's theory about the different elevations of the characters in works of fiction, the differences of three female characters will be further analyzed. All of these will contribute to a better understanding of characters of the same archetype and the original characterization of A. S. Byatt.In the fourth chapter, two typical and recurring images—glass coffin and serpent will be discussed. These two images both have rich symbolic implications. The detailed analysis of the two images is of great help to the comprehension and appreciation of the novel. Through detailed analysis, it is known that glass coffin and similar images derived from it are actually the symbol of female confinement or self-possession by themselves. This would help understand some eccentric behavior of these female characters: why LaMotte chooses to live with a female partner in a small house instead of getting married and living with a man; why the modern scholar Maud who is very successful in career and beautiful in appearance prefers to live in the Tennyson Tower for many years. The analysis of glass coffin also can help understand the theme of the novel—"possession". The image of serpent has very close relationship with female and it has rich implications too. It symbolizes loneliness and wisdom, and also implies freedom and revolt. Its symbolic meaning echoes with the characters in the novel, and helps the characterization in it. The employment of this image also reflects the thoughts of Byatt on women.Byatt once in her book On Histories and Stories mentions her viewpoint towards history through the historian, Barnes, that"The history of the world? Just voices echoing in the dark, images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories that sometimes seem to overlap; strange links, impertinent connections…."(Byatt, 2001: 50) By using various images, Byatt successfully narrates a history over one thousand years. Possession can be viewed as the echo of history. In conclusion, Possession perfectly exemplifies the theory of archetypal criticism and also the embodiment of Byatt's creative ideas.