1
Whats in a Word? Possessing A.S. Byatts
Meronymic Novel

• by Thelma J. Shinn
• Papers on Language Literature 31.2
• (1995) 164-84. presented by Anne Chen

2
Central Argument

• Possession A Romance by A. S. Byatt is a
  novel, balancing poetry and prose, past and
  present, and numerous shades and meanings of the
  word possession in a blend of the Romance and
  Realism styles of the Victorian and contemporary
  novel.

3
A meronym an image of parts

• A meronym, as gray color, merges opposite parts
  of white and black, an attempt to re-unite the
  fragmented traditions of narrative style by
  balancing the components.
• a blend of Romance and Realism
• a revision of both the past and the present
• a conception of cyclical and linear time

4
A blend of Romance and Realism

• Both Romance and Realism inherit meronymic
  novelistic traditions
• Romance, with all the wealth and all the courage
  and all the wit and all the adventure, is in
  terms of escapism and fantasy to give hopes and
  dreams in our time. e.g. Hawthornes The Scarlet
  Letter ,
• science fiction

5

• Realism, faithful representation of life in a
  naturalistic universe or an individual
  consciousness, is a reaction against the excesses
  of Romanticism in 19th century.
• e.g. Henry Jamess psychological realism
• Magic Realism return Romance to the novel.
• To balance Romance and Realism, Byatt returns to
  George Eliot and Nathaniel Hawthorne for
  stylistic guidance.

6
A revision of the past and the present

• In meronymic novel, the linear bias of the past
  gets rebirth from the interaction of the cyclical
  quest.
• A search for love two generations
  (Christabel and
• Ash/ Maud and Roland)
• The position of Victorian women the life of
  Christabel
• is reevaluated by contemporary feminist
  critics.
• Meronymic language Byatt allows her own
  living
• language the flexibility of Romance, of
  poetic narrative,
• so that she can re-imagine as well as
  recreate the Past
• in the Present.

7
Conclusion

• With her linguistic marriages of concept
• and phenomenon, and of emotion and
• action, Byatt creates a Romance in
• Possession captured within the word that
• lives on cyclically, however dead the
• phenomenal expression sharing the space of
• that word may be, so that new phenomena
• can be easily imagined as contemporary
• expressions of ongoing human truths.