Possession: A Self-conscious Artifact

A.S.Byatt,an essayist,critic and novelist,widely recognized for her examinations of English life.Above all,she is best known for her so-called romantic thriller Possession: A Romance,probably due to which she is known for her Victorian sensibilities and erudite characters who are often philosophical academics.In 1999 she was made DBE “for services to Literature”.Once a scholar and teacher of English and American literature,she likes writing the best and decided to pursue professional writing life after more than two decades teaching on campus.Possession: A Romance,which earns her world wide reputation,gives her competitive edge in the sibling rivalry,and brought Byatt into the mainstream in both English and American literary world.This thesis,with the help of those ideas from Waugh,will try to examine the metafictional features in the novel Possession: A Romance again with special attention to self-consciousness characteristic of self-exposure of the authorial control and self-reflexivity,reassessing Byatt's share of contribution on the possibilities of narrative mode.Chapter one discusses collage as a way of narration in Possession,through which different historical times and genres of writings are put together,exposing the relative and deconstructed status of “truth” and “fiction” in and out the world of text.And collaboration of different literary genres provides readability and thus wins wide readership.Chapter two discusses the strategies of parody and intertextuality in the author's complex employment of characterization,creating fiction within fiction,reflections upon reflection,through which the fictionality is exposed completely and a pervasive indeterminacy is hanging over reality.Chapter three examines the strategies she uses to produce what critics call “critifiction” and to echo instead of to question what is to be held truth under the influences of contemporary cultural and literary theories on the other hand.A balance is successfully kept between readers' curiosity and Byatt's own interests and expertise.