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Possession a romance A.S Byatt tài liệu, giáo án, bài giảng , luận văn, luận án, đồ án, bài tập lớn về tất cả các lĩnh v...
P0S5E55I0N A ROMANCE "This intelligent, literary, and ambitious thriller will take its place along- side The Name ofthe Rose and Waterlandas Umberto Eco's scholarly monk and Graham Swift's history teacher are joined by another unconventional type of'natural detective,' the literary critic [Byatt] combines the drive of the thriller with the measured exploration of human nature more nor- mally associated with the nineteenth-century novel, and throughout she threads the poetry and passion of 'romance."' —Tlie Times (London) "In this book, [Byatt's] clever, discursive talent at last finds its form. Bursting loose from the more or less naturalistic mode of its predecessors into what an epigraph from Hawthorne calls the 'latitude' of the romance, this cerebral extravaganza of a story zigzags with unembarrassed zest across an imaginative terrain bristling with symbolism and symmetries, shimmering with myth and legend, and haunted every where by presences of the past Possession is eloquent about the intense pleasures of reading. And, with sumptuous artistry, it provides a feast of them." —Tlw Sunday Times (London) "Possession is sure to get plenty of praise, as it deserves; it has earned the right to be judged by high standards .Possession bids fair to be looked back upon as one of the most memorable novels of the 1990s." —Times Literary Supplement "Iris Murdoch had better look to her laurels. This is a marvelous novel, well and truly in the Murdoch class at its best On academic rivalry and obsession, Byatt is delicious. On the nature of possession—the lover by the beloved, the biographer by his subject—she is profound." —Evening Standard "Possession is a big book, a spectacular novel of ideas and intrigue." —London Review of Books "This is the sort of plot in which the hero gets the girl, villains are unmasked, lovers come passionately together, and lost children are found. All this has a welcome flavour of daring and grandeur about it. Possession is big, ambitious and clever." —Hie Independent 52295 9"780394"586236 ISBN Q-3TM-5fiL23-^ A. S. Byatt has earned a unique reputa- tion as a novelist who manages to com- bine not only passion and intellect but the life of the emotions with that of the mind. Thjs skill is shown at its triumphant best in Possession, a tour de force of wit and intelligence, romance and scholarship. Like John Fowles's The Fretuh Lieuten- ants Woman, Possession is both a modern novel and a high Victorian novel. Two young academics are researching into the lives of, respectively, the Browningesque mid-Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash and his contemporary Christabel LaMotte; as they delve deeper into the turbulent and hitherto unrelated lives of the two poets through their letters, journals and poems, and trace their move- ments from London to the north York-* shire coast—from spiritualist seances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany— a bizarre and haunting counterpointing and correspondence of passions and ideas begins to emerge. An astonishingly rich and exhilarating blend of mystery, romance, comedy, Victoriana and modern university novel—it reaches its climax on a storm-tossed night in the churchyard where Ash and his secret are buried— Possession is A. S. Byatt's finest and most ambitious novel yet. A. S. BYATT has written five books of fiction—Shadow of a Sun, The Game, Tlie Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, and Sugar and Other Stories. She taught English and American literature at University College, London, and is a distinguished critic and reviewer. Her critical work includes Degrees if Freedom (a study of Iris Murdoch) and Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time, Jacket painting: "The Beguiling of Merlin," by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Courtesy of National Museums and Galleries of Merscyside, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight. Random House, Inc., New York, N.Y. 10022 Printed in the U.S.A. 10/90 © 1990 Random House, Inc. [...]... paid a maths coach with the earnings of a paper-round she had sent him out on And so he had acquired an old-fashioned classical education, with gaps where teachers had been made redundant or classroom chaos had reigned He had done what was hoped of him, always, had four A' s at A Level, a First, a PhD He was now essentially unemployed, scraping a living on part-time tutoring, dogsbodying for Blackadder... Randolph Ash, a personification of history itself in its early mythical days (Ash had also written a poem about Gibbon and one about the Venerable Bede, historians of greatly differing kinds Blackadder had written an article on R H Ash and relative historiography.) Roland compared Ash's text with the translation, and copied parts onto an index card He had two boxes of these, tomato-red and an intense grassy... go out in company very little, and was the morefortunate that dear Crabb managed to entice you to his breakfast table How much I owe to his continuing good health, that he should feel able and eager, at eighty-two years of age, to entertain poets and undergraduates and mathematical professors and political thinkers so early in the day, and to tell the anecdote of the Bust with his habitual fervour without... discouraged and liked to discourage others (He was also a stringent scholar.) Roland was now employed, parttime, in what was known as Blackadder's Ash Factory (why not Ashram? Val had said), which operated from the British Museum, to which Ash's wife, Ellen, had given many of the manuscripts of his poems, when he died The Ash Factory was funded by a small grant from London University and a much larger... rest The A. S BYATT H I librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts Roland undid the bindings The book sprang apart, like a box, disgorging leaf after leaf of faded paper, blue, cream, grey, covered with rusty writing, the brown scratches of a steel nib Roland recognised... free watchfulness, things he had never had After a week, Val came back, tearful and shaky, and declared that she meant at least to earn her living, and would take a course in shorthand-typing "At least you want me," she told Roland, her face damp and glistening "I don't know why you should want me, I'm no good, but you do." "Of course I do," Roland had said "Of course." When his DES grant ran out, Val... perfume She was not constructed to be attractive Roland half wished that she was, that a merchant banker would take her out to dinner, or a shady solicitor to the Playboy Club He hated himself for these demeaning fantasies, and was reasonably afraid that she might suspect he nourished them If he could get a job, it might be easier to initiate some change He made applications and was regularly turned... Blackadder and some restaurant dishwashing In the expansive 1960s he would have advanced rapidly and involuntarily, but now he saw himself as a failure and felt vaguely responsible for this He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which was not often... know that you came only to honour dear Crabb, at a small informal party, because he had been of assistance to your illustrious Father, and valued his work at a time when it meant a great deal to him But you did come out, so I may hope that you can be induced to vary your quiet days with I am sure you understand Roland was first profoundly shocked by these writings, and then, in his scholarly capacity,... Randolph Ash what a man was, though he could, without undue disturbance, have written that general pantechnicon of a sentence using other terms, phrases and rhythms and have come in the end A. S BYATT| ||I3 to the same satisfactory evasive metaphor Or so Roland thought, trained in the post-structuralist deconstruction of the subject If he had been asked what Roland Michell was, he would have had to give a very . into what an epigraph from Hawthorne calls the 'latitude' of the romance, this cerebral extravaganza of a story zigzags with unembarrassed zest across an imaginative terrain. where Ash and his secret are buried— Possession is A. S. Byatt& apos ;s finest and most ambitious novel yet. A. S. BYATT has written five books of fiction—Shadow of a Sun, . Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Byatt, A. S. (Antonia Susan). Possession / by A. S. Byatt. p. cm. ISBN 0-3 9 4-5 862 3-9 I. Title. PR6052.Y2P6 1990 823'.914—dc20