The Serpent Of Imagination

A. S. Byatt is one of the most prominent contemporary British writers and the winnerof the Man Booker Prize (1990). Published in2009, The Children’s Book is an intricateportrait of several families living through a time of profound social change, from1895to1918. The novel reiterates one of the author’s recurring themes: the dangerous fiction, andmainly discusses it in the forms of fairytale-writing, puppet drama and pot-making.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One gives a brief introduction to A. S.Byatt and The Children’s Book followed by a literature review of the critical reception aswell as the purpose and layout of the thesis. Chapter Two, through analysis of fiction’snegative influence on characters, argues the dangerous fiction rearranging, blurring anddestroying the reality. Chapter Three focuses on the roots of dangerous fiction, namely thedecaying of age, the escapist Edwardians and the immoral fiction-makers. By revealing thedeceptive nature of the popular fairytale and drama, this section mainly discusses thepoints that people who retreat into childhood through fiction are actually taking the fancyas a way of escaping from the cruel reality and that immoral writers transgress theboundary between fiction and reality, making the fiction even more dangerous. ChapterFour discusses the strategies adopted by people under the influence of fiction includingpassive escape, flat rejection and rational perspective. Rationally treating and turning itinto something beneficial is the best way out of the dangers of fiction.The last chapter is the conclusion, in which the author of the thesis contends thatByatt’s elaborate structure of fiction within fiction is a self-reference. The two levels offiction both have the duality of “self-conscious realism” in its function. They not onlyimitate the reality, but also think about their own form about reflecting reality. Therefore,by picturing the dangerous nature of the fiction within the text, Byatt is actually reflectingon the The Children’s Book in itself. As a moral tale, The Children’s Book delivers Byatt’s didactic teachings on the responsibilities of writer, reader and individual in the society.