A Study On The Ekphrasis In A.S. Byatt’s Tetralogy

A.S.Byatt(1936 —)is honored as one of the most imaginative and intellectual novelists in British literature today,whose tetralogy includes The Virgin in the Garden(1978),Still Life(1985),The Tower of Babel(1996)and A Whistling Woman(2002).The novels revolve around the Potter family,mainly telling the story of the two Potter sisters,Stephanie Potter and Frederica Potter,from their school days to their marriage and children involving their growth and their feelings of joy and sorrow.Along with this main line of growth,various painting elements are interspersed so that the art,characters,and plot of the novel are cleverly blended together.In the tetralogy,the author makes full use of various painting elements to structure the whole text,showing a clear connection with the paintings in terms of text presentation and thematic content.As a whole,the painting elements in the tetralogy include various kinds of real or fictional paintings,as well as discussions between the narrator and the fictional characters about painting.All these elements of painting are expressed through Byatt’s unique words.In this paper,we will analyze the ekphrasis in Byatt’s tetralogy in the light of the definition of “ekphrasis” by Hollander and Byatt researchers in order to understand more deeply the interaction between Byatt’s novels and paintings,to further explore Byatt’s implicit poetic and pictorial views,and to explore the writer’s use of ekphrasis.The thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter focuses on the sorting and classifying of ekphrasis in the tetralogy,and analyzes their role in the theme and characterization of the novel.Firstly,Byatt’s graphemes of real paintings evoke intertextual visual imagination of the actual paintings and mirror the themes and characters of the novels.Secondly,Byatt’s geometrical descriptions of fictional paintings reflect the writer’s own aesthetic interests and are an important way for Byatt to reflect the aesthetic enhancement of Frederica,the novel’s heroine.Lastly,this theoretical rhetorical device is a writing strategy developed by Byatt based on the legacy of Proust and other previous writers,reflecting not only Byatt’s excellent descriptive skills,but also the writer’s cognition that painting can improve one’s aesthetic ability.The second chapter explores the poetic and pictorial views implied in ekphrasis.The ekphrasis in Byatt’s writing actually reflect her understanding of the respective characteristics of fiction and painting and their relationship.In the first two novels,Byatt pursues the accuracy of reproduction of reality under the influence of realist literary view and seeks inspiration for reproduction from traditional paintings.At this stage,the writer’s ekphrasis is mainly manifested in the depiction of real or fictional paintings,and the figurative and precise nature of object painting and scene painting given by ekphrasis.Starting with the third book,The Tower of Babel,influenced by modernist theories and the "crisis of reproduction",and based on the perception that modern painting no longer aims to reproduce reality,Byatt continued to adhere to the three typical ekphrasis of the early period,meanwhile he began to try to cross the boundary between two different media of art,using language in the same way that painting uses.It is in this sense that Byatt expands the boundaries of the art form.The third chapter examines the role of ekphrasis presentation as the elements of painting in the main narrative of women’s growth from the perspective of the tetralogy as a whole and in the context of feminist criticism.As a thread interspersed in the main narrative of women’s growth,different types of paintings are presented by different types of ekphrasis,and they mirror each other with the growth of the heroine of the novel.In the first part of the tetralogy,The Virgin in the Garden,portraits play a prominent role in shaping the main characters as the theme paintings of the novel,and contrast with the self-perceptions of the two heroines of the novel,setting the main tone of tetralogy that women struggle between spirituality and flesh.In the second part,Still Life,the author uses the title "Still Life" as a thematic metaphor to show the plight of intellectual women of all classes trapped in their family life.The death of one of the novel’s heroines,Stephanie,evokes a broader connection with "still life" as a genre.In the last two books of the tetralogy,The Tower of Babel and The Whistling Woman,Frederica looks to collage to find a way out of her dilemma,breaking through the layers of bondage and eventually growing into a woman with a broad vision who seeks a balance between spirit and flesh,family and career.The concluding section points out that although the relationship between literature and painting has been discussed in Chinese and foreign literature,but the idea that they can learn from each other has been affirmed by the writers and artists.On the basis of inheriting the literary tradition of poetry and painting from her predecessors,Byatt has made bold innovations,her unique ekphrasis is the embodiment of such innovations.While inheriting the achievements of his predecessors,Byatt expanded the boundaries of ekphrasis and realized the integration of literature and painting in an all-round way.