A.S. Byatt, before and after Possession

Regards croisés sur le monde anglophone

This series, entitled 'Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the English-speaking World', examines the theoretical and practical crossover between fields and disciplines, as well as their methods, concepts and analytical tools, concerning the evolution of English studies in France, where interdisciplinarity has grown increasingly prominent in academic discourse but has rarely itself been the object of inquiry.

A. S. Byatt, Before and After Possession : Recent Critical Approaches

Possession : A Romance is a novel that now holds an overwhelming position in literary criticism and in A. S. Byatt's bibliography. With the award of the Booker Prize in 1990, Byatt's writing career entered a new phase indeed, as Possession received praise from critics and readers as well as attention from academics. Although unique in Byatt's oeuvre, Possession nevertheless contains distinct Byattian traits that can be found in the rest of her production, hence our choice to reexamine Possession twenty-five years on and to look at Byatt's work through the prism of this particular novel. Most of the articles collected in this volume thus consider Possession on its own or in relation with earlier and later works of fiction.

Book Practices & Textual Itineraries is a series of peer-reviewed book-length publications devoted to the study of book history and textual scholarship. It traces evolutions in the production, transmission and reception of books and texts over time and across cultural and disciplinary boundaries. It likewise examines new practices that are developing in response to the acceleration of textual production and exchange provoked by electronic media, and considers their significance for the editing and interpretation of literary works. Published at the Université de Lorraine, with an international editorial advisory board, the series aims at facilitating dialogue on book history and textual scholarship between scholars from France, Europe and the English-speaking world.