POSSESSION: A ROMANCE AS AN EXAMPLE OF HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION

This paper aims to analyze Antonia Susan Byatt’s novel Possession: A Romance as an example of a postmodernist historical novel or of a historiographic metafiction. Historiographic metafiction attempts to concantrate on historical personages and past events which are not mentioned in history for political or moral reasons. Thus, the omitted events in history are brought to the forefront and plural histories are produced as alternatives to the mentioned history with the retelling of the stories of the past in historiographic metafictions, which is resulted in creating a multiplicity of histories. Possession: A Romance can be studied as a good example of historiographic metafiction as it has different voices and, thus, plural histories through questioning the line between fiction and history. It also defies the monology and problematizes the objectivity of historical representations of two Victorian poets whose histories are silenced as they are found to be incompatible with the official history for moral reasons. Therefore, in contrast to the monology, the novel creates multivocality allowing different voices to be heard through subverting the historical documents and events it refers to. Thus, historiographic metafiction becomes a liberating force as it allows other histories to be told. Lastly, the novel employs other metafictional elements such as making use of non-linear narrative and emphasizing self-reflexivity through creating an untraditional third person omniscient narrator with a parodic intention. Keywords: Antonia Susan Byatt, Possession: A Romance, historiographic metafiction, multivocality, history and fiction