Reading Widdershins: a study of romance and A.S. Byatt’s Possession: a romance

• Main Author: Kirkness, Catherine Jane
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4989

In this study I consider A. S. Byatt’s Possession: a Romance as both an example of and a commentary on its genre. In the first chapter, I explore some reviews of Byatt’s romance, with an emphasis on critical approaches to the book’s genre, and introduce the critical material, including studies of fairy tales, which informs my discussion of romance. In Chapter 2, I analyse the assertion that “Romance is a proper form for women” (Possession 404) and suggest that the form of romance may promote new kinds of social organization by liberating the imagination of writers and readers alike. I build on the theme of romance as a subversive genre in Chapter 3 with a discussion of animal transformation and a comparison of Byatt’ s version of “The Glass Coffm” with Grimm’s more traditional version of the same tale. Chapter 4 includes a discussion of different styles of reading; I concentrate on the relationship between curiosity and faith in Possession in order to suggest some of the implications of this relationship for readers and critics of romance. === Arts, Faculty of === English, Department of === Graduate