| Possession: A Romance (1990) is the novel which makes the British writer A.S.Byattwell-known around the world. It is framed with mixing styles, various genres and differentvoices that help to reflect the post-modern society combined and contrased with the ancientera and the Victorian Age. Many critics take the novel as a mirror of the post-modern societyand try to find diversified ways to interpret it.The combination of past and present, romantic stories, letters and gothic stories inPossession provides large areas for critics to interpret it from perspectives concerned withlanguage, characters and plot. Until now, studies of this novel can be found mainly focused onfeminism, mythical and archetypal criticism, historicism as well as post-modernist writing.This thesis studies the development of the metonymic and metaphoric modes of discoursein Possession in the light of the theories raised by Roman Jakobson and David Lodge. TheIntroduction centers on the account of A.S.Byatt and the novel, as well as the theories onmetaphoric and metonymic discourses. Chapter One to Chapter Four aims to discuss how themetonymic and metaphoric modes of discourse develop and influence the development of theplot and thematic implications of this novel. In Possession, the ancient myth of Melusina andthe love story between Ash and LaMotte in the Victorian time are set in juxtaposition with theromantic story of Roland and Maud embedded in their experiences of academic research,together with the academic adventures of some other contemporary scholars in post-modernsociety. Along with this is the development of the novel from metaphoric discourse (as in theromance of Melusina), to metaphoric discouse foregrounded by metonymic discourse (as inthe romantic love story of Ash and LaMotte against the reality of Victorian society), to themetaphoric discouse out of the metonymic discourse (as in the academic and romantic storiesof Roland and Maud in the post-modern socity), and finally to the metonymic discourse (as inthe academic adventures of some utilitarian academics in the same society). In the conclusion,this thesis reveals the significance of the two modes of discourse in strengthening the thematicand aesthetic meaning of the novel produced by the development of romanticism and realism. |
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