| This study focuses on the first three historiographic novels in a projected quartet---The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, and Babel Tower---which historicises what we now refer to as the "crises in representation" that occurred over the late 50s and into the 60s. I trace the figure of the Undifferentiated Narrator, both as it is referred to and read by the characters in the world of the novels, and as it is invoked or broken up by the forms of the narratives themselves.; My methodology is outlined in the first section, wherein I place a reading of Byatt's work within the context of contemporary debate regarding the ethics of representation. Then I treat each novel separately, since each is a self-contained novelistic experiment with a different form of literary realism.; In the end I conclude that Byatt's use of polyvocality and multiple histories help us to come to terms with nostalgia for the self-present self, by showing us that it haunts every narrative (and anti-narrative) and is a coercive figure in every life. |
