Detecting Histories and the Past: The Letter in A. S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance (1990)

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Pages: 321-342
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/HWWX2301

Abstract:

In A. S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance (1990), two accidentally discovered letters, carefully tucked between the pages of a copy of Vico’s Principi di scienza nuova in the London Library, open a vigorous investigation of the past. The subtitle implies that this is a quest story whose main characters set out on a detective-like scholarly journey to identify the addressee of these letters, consequently leading to the discovery of a clandestine intimate correspondence, well concealed for a hundred years, between two fictional nineteenth-century intellectuals, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. The intertwined viewpoints of Victorianism and postmodernism, embodied by the Ash-LaMotte and Michell-Bailey pairs, evolve through a dialogue across time, reflecting on the present about the past. Possession presents a metafictional approach to the construction and invention of history that, later in her On Histories and Stories (2000), Byatt discusses through a theoretical perspective concerning the methods of writing and interpreting historical narratives.

Keywords:

epistolarity, letters, metafiction, history, novel, romance

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