Towards The Intertextuality In A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance

Possession:A Romance is one of the master pieces in British literary history. The author A. S. Byatt (1936--) is an international elitist for her excellent writing and broad knowledge of literature. Byatt applies detective, romantic and literarily archeological elements to create this work which is rich in poetry, fairytale and myth. Intertextuality is a literary theory out of semiotic roots. It deals with the relationship between one text and the others. Besides, intertextuality reflects how one text is related to other texts.When a writer wrote a work, there are basically three steps they would follow. First step is to absorb others texts, or to accept others works, which means to take other's ideas, words, etc. Secondly, the writer would rethink about the past works and try to create their own works based on their own understandings. Then, by presenting different point of views including the writer's own, a full-aspect work is weaved into form.There are three points that are to be studied from the aspect of intertextuality in Byatt's novel Possession. They are citations, parodies and female dialogues. In Possession, there are many excerpts from the works of fictional poet Ash and poetess LaMotte. The excerpts used in the novel fall into two kinds according to the author of this paper. One is epigraph and the other is quotation. Epigraph is a type of citation appears at the beginning of a chapter. It is functioned as a clue to the content of the chapter. Citation, on the other hand, appears in the text and plays the role of relating other texts to the new one.There are six major female characters in the novel. By dialoguing with these six female characters, Byatt expresses her feminist idea that in a man dominated society women are suppressed and marginalized. Besides, love to women is an opposite concept to freedom. Women should awaken and subvert as the City of Is tells:after the men world is downing, a women world will arise.Possession is one of Byatt's best novels and full of parodies. Byatt not only rewrites old fairytales and myths to provide them with new meanings, but also subverts people's idea about the old tales and myths. Literature is developed through these self-absorbing and self-rewriting and grows into a master form of art.