Intertextuality In A.S. Byatt's Possession

Regarded as a prominent novelist,an outstanding short stories writer as well as an academic critic in British literature world for her extensive knowledge and artistic writing styles,A.S.Byatt is awarded the Booker Prize in 1990--the highest British literary award for fiction and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize for her masterpiece Possession: A Romance.Once published,Possession has drawn the attention both of scholarly researchers and other people,for in this intelligent and ambitious masterwork,people are obsessed with everything such as epistolary styles,bildungsroman,detective elements,myths and fairy tales.The novel has been studied from various perspectives such as feminism,postmodernism,historical consciousness and intertextuality by plenty of scholars and critics both at home and abroad.Though intertextual research has been done by researchers,there is plenty of space for further exploration of considerable intertextual features in Possession.This thesis aims to interpret the novel for its intertextual devices like parody,allusion and archetype in order to comprehend how Byatt skillfully combines her extensive knowledge with her concern for history and women.This thesis is made up of five parts.It starts with a brief introduction of A.S.Byatt's position and her literary achievements,literature review at home and abroad of Possession: A Romance and the general introduction of the intertextuality theory as well as the significance of this study.The focuses on the concrete application of the intertextual devices in Possession extend from Chapter One to Chapter Three.The first chapter is devoted to the analysis of parodies of Detective Story,Romance and Bildungsroman in order to offer readership a network of intertextuality and express the author's nostalgic feelings towards history.Literary critics and readers are described as the detectives in Possession who shoulder the responsibility to reveal the truth of the mysterious love affair between two Victorians by means of every clue given by Byatt in the text and fictional texts.Readers' dynamic participation in the detective process achieves Byatt's creative literary concept that is the association ofthe pleasure of reading with that of writing.Byatt makes a contrast of the love between Victorian period and modern period in order to satirize the contemporary world devoid of passionate emotion for love and the loss of the importance attached to romance.Besides,the parody of Bildungsroman places emphasis on the connection with history.The second chapter mainly deals with the allusions to fairy tales and myths so as to reveal Byatt's respectful and appreciative attitudes towards literary traditions and her concern for women's living situation.In “The Threshold”,Childe's choice of death rather than power and sex destroys the female images that are stereotyped as seducers and disaster causers.The allusion to “Melusina Myth”indicates Byatt's unique and insightful thinking about female,love and marriage.The princess in Byatt's The Glass Coffin completely manifests a woman's self-consciousness in that she is much more powerful.The third chapter explores Byatt's concern for women's love,career and marriage from the perspective of archetypal color,archetypal plot and archetypal character.White as a basic color in Possession not only stands for Ellen's purity and innocence but also LaMotte and Maud's enclosed and marginalized living state.And black represents Roland's mysterious life and the black artist's evil magic.The three female images of Melusina,LaMotte and Maud connect the ancient times,Victorian period and modern times together to reveal the continuity of history.The last part comes as a conclusion which summarizes the ideas expressed in the whole thesis and echoes Byatt's attitudes towards women and history.Intertextual devices place emphasis on the relationship between one text and others and the study of it offers readers refreshing ways to read Byatt and her works and enables readers to fully appreciate Byatt's innovative narrative techniques and her unique artistic charm.