Refracting the past in praise of the dead poets in Possession: a romance

Abstract

I propose to analyse the novel Possession: A Romance (1990) by A. S. Byatt, taking into account the narrative techniques and the strategies fo plot construction that work to refract the 19th century novel, as well as the present critical apparatus. Out of the pastiche and parody that compose the novel in question, the past surfaces, provisional and irretrievable, in textual form - through the intertextual allusions (however fictive) to the Victorian poets Robert Browning, Chrstina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, or Alfred Lord Tennyson, among others; throught the rewriting of myth and fiary tale; through the reminiscent narrative techniques of the Victorian novel. The pastiche out of whcih the present is woven seems to show a greater contempt in relation to modern critics and criticism.