Specters Of History

Antonia Susan Byatt is a famous English novelist,poet and literary critic.Her masterpiece Possession has attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad to make researches from the perspectives of thematic analysis,feminism,archetypal criticism and comparison studies.However,there have been few researches so far analyzing the spectrality reflected in the novel from the perspective of spectral criticism.Spectral criticism is a new literary criticism in the west in the last three decades.It is the study of spectrality in texts and history,Jacques Derrida and David Punter are the representatives of this theory.From the perspective of spectral criticism,this thesis attempts to systematically analyze spectrality in Possession,and then summarize and classify spectrality of text,which aims at exploring how the specters haunt in the layers of history and cultural memory.The thesis generalizes spectral criticism serving as theoretical framework,and explains two terms — the spectrality of text and the spectrality of history — in detail.On the basis of above mentioned interpretations,the thesis first summarizes and classifies the spectrality of text in Possession into three categories,namely gothic elements,spiritualism and ventriloquism.Then,in term of the history,the thesis analyzes how specters caused different haunts in triple historical spaces: the ancient times,the Victoria era and the contemporary age.Finally,in term of the cultural memory,this thesis explores the sharp contrast between the dazzling past and the dim present portrayed by Byatt under the haunt of specters,which aims at further revealing Byatt's view of specter: missing the history while satirizing the present.With the employment of spectral criticism,this thesis makes a systematic research on Possession,aiming to help readers better understand the roles of the specter in the layers of text,history and cultural memory as well as the spectral narrative pattern of the novel.Furthermore,the thesis expects to provide certain hints for the research of the spectral narrative pattern of Possession.