The Theme Of Interpretation In Byatt's Possession

A.S.Byatt is an English novelist and critic that draws tremendous attention and research efforts in the literary arena.Her literary creation has much to do with her long-term literary teaching and study.Abounding in changes of styles,combining traditional narrative techniques and innovative ones,and addressing issues deep and provocative,Byatt's writing has gradually become one of the focal points of literary throughout the world.Among Byatt's works,her fifth novel Possession,which deals with the scholarly exploration and critical reconstruction of some Victorian figures by some contemporary university scholars,deserves our concern in particular.The novel was an instant success.It won the most authoritative novel prize Booker Prize for fiction in 1990.In the same year,it was awarded the Irish International Prize for fiction.However,though it attracts much critical interest,the most important concern of the novel seems still to be examined.There have been many thorough studies on its genre,narrative features,and the feminist issues,etc.,but few scholars have analyzed the novel from the angle of its theme of interpretation which most evidently and most essentially characterizes the work.This thesis,therefore,intends to embark on an analysis of the theme of interpretation in Byatt's Possession,or her critique of the validity and effectiveness of the various approaches which the scholars in the novel utilize in their efforts to reconstruct the past.The thesis consists of five parts.Chapter One is an introduction,which provides a thesis statement,a review of the critical reception of the novel,and an explanation of the critical framework of the present thesis.Chapter Two analyzes the dual contrastive structure of the novel.I argue that the novel is structured with two contrasts.There is an overt contrast between the present and the past:the novel is essentially describes how the contemporary scholars endeavor to reconstruct the past.Then there is also a contrast between two different "pasts"—the "false" past or pasts that the various scholars try to build up and the "true" past that the novelist tells us as past facts.Chapter Three analyzes how those fictional scholars in the novel reconstruct "false" past and why they fail.Chapter Four investigates how the novel passes criticism on present literary scholarship by describing the various futile efforts carried out by the fictional university scholars to reconstruct the Victorian past.The last part serves as the conclusion of the thesis:through showing how those fictional university scholars fail to reconstruct the Victorian past and how their academic approaches prove inadequate,the novel conveys a serious doubt and a profound reexamination of the present academic production.