| A. S. Byatt is a well-known and distinguished writer and literary critic inBritish literature and her famous work Possession: A Romance won theBooker Prize in1990, which attracts much critical attention from many criticsall over the world.This thesis aims at interpreting Possession by means of New Historicismtheory to analyze the relationship between history and reality manifested inthis novel. This interpretation depends largely on the theories proposed byLouis A. Montrose’s “the historicity of texts” and “the textuality of history”and Michel Foucault’s power discourse theory. The analysis of “the historicityof texts” mainly proves that Byatt’s Possession truly reflects the panorama ofsociety and Byatt’s creation has active influence on reality.“The textuality ofhistory” in Possession discusses that people have to quest for historical truththrough textual materials. However, due to the subjectivity of textualmaterials, people have different interpretations of historical truth. Moreover,by means of Michel Foucault’s power discourse, this thesis mainly elaborates the subversion and containment of women’s condition and the currentsituation of literary criticism. |
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